"The Tiger's Fuzzy Tale"
A short one-act play featuring Tiger Woods and his wife Elin Woods.
ELIN WOODS: "So you're telling me you haven't talked to that woman in six months!"
TIGER WOODS: "Absolutely, babe, I broke it off completely."
EW: "You filthy liar! I checked your cell phone and there are three calls to her just today!"
TW: "Ulp!" [Audible gulp] "Look, I'm getting out of here until you're more rational. I can't talk to you when you're crazy like this."
[Tiger exits room with EW in pursuit. As she leaves, EW grabs a golf club from a bag by the door.]
EW: [Enraged] "Don't you walk out on me, you lousy bastard!"
TW: "What are you doing with that club?! [EW swings and hits TW's arm with the club.] "OWWWW! What the hell are you doing?!"
EW: "You're not running out on me, you little creep!"
TW: [Getting into his black Escalade and starting it up] "I'm not running out on you – I'm just going out for a drive until you calm down. Oh, Jesus, my arm is numb – how do you expect me to play golf with a numb arm?!"
[TW quickly drives off. As a parting shot, EW hits the back window of the Escalade with the golf club, shattering the window.]
TW: [Yelling out the driver's side window] "You crazy bitch! Take a chill pill!"
[Moments later there is the sound of a car crashing at the end of the drive. EW runs to where the Escalade has hit a tree.]
EW: "Ha, ha – serves you right you steaming pile of crap!" [Mood changes to concern] "Wait, are you hurt, Tiger?"
TW: "My arm isn't right where you HIT IT with the GODDAMN GOLF CLUB, but I'm okay otherwise, just a couple of scratches. Shit, just look at my friggin' car!"
EW: "You'd better go to the hospital. I'll call 911."
TW: "Wait, wait! Don't call yet. You realize if it comes out what we were fighting about you can kiss $20 million in endorsement deals good-bye. We need a good story to tell the cops first."
EW: [Skeptical] "Yeah, sure, what kind of story could cover your arm and the shattered back window? I want to hear this."
TW: "I've got it – I had the car accident, hurt my arm, passed out cold, and you smashed the back window to courageously save me!"
EW: "Why would I smash in the back window to save you? Wouldn't I smash a side window? Besides, there's nothing wrong with the driver's side door – wouldn't I just open that and get you out?"
TW: "Hey, I'm Tiger Woods -- people love my ass. Nobody's going to ask questions like that! You just stick to the story and we've got it made!"
EW: "Okay, I'm calling 911."
[The End?]
© 2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
The Tattlesnake – Frank Luntz is a Scum-Sucking Pig Edition
With apologies to our porcine friends who also happen to suck scum, but don't have much influence on the electorate.
"[A]sk a question in the way that you get the right answer."
-- Frank Luntz on his 'fair and balanced' polling methods.
While some readers may chastise me for gross understatement in my title, and I take their point, I decided to keep this clean, or as clean as you can when describing the contents of the sole working Port-O-Potty on free chili and beer night at a baseball game.
What makes Republican word-whacker Frank Luntz my target is that he is an intentional and dedicated deceiver of the public, smart enough to know full well what he's doing, but blithely willing to trot out his wares -- borrowed from the misuse of modern psychological techniques to sell the gullible what they don't need joined with a carnival conman's shell game pitch -- for the temporary benefit of his bank account, while his country slides into a wreckage of divisiveness and debt. If you'd like to find the home base for the decimation of our public speech into ignorant, inflamed, fearful, flag-draped hatred; the revision of our history into a reeking bonanza of selfish suicidal capitalism, evangelical Christian crapola and nasty neoconservative warhawk bilge; and the reduction of our political discourse into so much overheated, oversimplified, covertly racist, sound-bite slag, you can point to three names: the late Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, and the lesser-known, but every bit as important, Frank Luntz as the authors of the meltdown in progress.
"Luntz is glibly amoral, worrying only about whether language has the right effect, not whether it's true."
-- Steven Poole, commenting on Luntz's book "Words That Work" in The Guardian (UK), July 21, 2007.
It was Frank's notion to rename a bill allowing more pollution as the 'Clean Air Act'; it was Luntz who told the GOP to re-label estate taxes as 'death taxes' so that the wealthy paid less while the rest of us took up the slack; it was his demented mind that connected Iraq to 9/11 and instructed Republican pols to always preface any mention of the failed Iraq incursion with '9/11 changed everything'; behind nearly every current and past GOP talking point, endlessly repeated in the Right-Wing Echo Chamber, you'll find Frank's pasty round face, tirelessly choosing just the right words to convince a malleable faction of the American public to eat corporate Republican turds and think it's prime rib.
"While the televised Luntz often displays a disarming sense of humor, is reasonably affable and self-effacing, he is also self-righteous and an endless supplier of disingenuous blather. Watching him in action is to recognize a master of style over substance; emotion trumps fact."
-- Bill Berkowitz, "The Frank Luntz Effect: Spraying Perfume on Dog Turds," Smirking Chimp, Aug. 31, 2007.
Luntz was at it again a couple of weeks ago on C-Span, in a segment from a book fair where he was pushing his latest pile of literary trash. Assembling an audience of supposedly average Americans (by Frank's definition -- the first few rows were populated by disgruntled teabaggers), Luntz demonstrated his low talent for cheesy misdirection by lauding his current employer, Fox News, for being "fair and balanced" – yes, he used those words -- because they allowed him to show that Obama was polling ahead of McCain just prior to the 2008 election. "MSNBC wouldn't have done that," Frank pugnaciously added, omitting the pertinent information that MSNBC, after giving him his own show, had fired Luntz in 2004 when the cable network was alerted that his focus groups and poll results were tainted by his conservative ideology, all while he was lying to the public and MSNBC that his polls were impartial and unbiased.
"To be 'Orwellian' is to speak with absolute clarity, to be succinct, to explain what the event is, to talk about what triggers something happening … and to do so without any pejorative whatsoever."
-- Frank Luntz, redefining the word 'Orwellian' on Terry Gross' NPR 'Fresh Air' show, Jan. 9, 2007.
"Orwellian (ôr wel′ē ən) adjective: of or like the society portrayed by Orwell in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which a totalitarian state exercises almost total control over the public and private activities of the citizens."
-- From Webster's New World College Dictionary.
In the summer of 2008, around the time of the RNC convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul, in an event also shown on C-Span, Frank exposed his grubby game during a session with a Minnesota focus group using his little handheld 'dial-testing' boxes that provide moment-by-moment reaction to the words in a speech. Luntz was plainly beside himself that so many in this crowd were reacting well to Obama's words and, exhibiting obvious irritation, singled out various independents and former Republicans in the audience to interrogate on why they planned to vote for Obama. A side note here: As anyone in the polling business knows, professional pollsters who want a clean, unprejudiced outcome never show emotion to their focus groups. It's well known that such a demonstration can influence the result as many people, politely and without thinking, desire to please the authority figure – in this case, the pollster who assembled the group. Yet here was Luntz figuratively wearing his Red-State armband, his voice tinged with anger and frustration at those who didn't care to vote Republican in 2008. It's to the credit of these sturdy Minnesotans that few were cajoled by Luntz's sweaty performance into changing their vote – the feeling against the GOP was that strong. It's no surprise Luntz was reprimanded in 1997 by the American Association for Public Opinion Research – he refused to provide raw data, allegedly due to 'client confidentiality,' for his claim that the 1994 Republican 'Contract with America' was supported by 60 percent of the American public.
"In 2000 he was censured by the National Council on Public Polls 'for allegedly mischaracterizing on MSNBC the results of focus groups he conducted during the [2000] Republican Convention.' In September 2004, MSNBC dropped Luntz from its planned coverage of that year's presidential debate, following a letter from Media Matters that outlined Luntz's GOP ties and questionable polling methodology … In the wake of the 2008 Presidential election, fellow Republican and prominent pollster Bill McInturff criticized Luntz before journalists at a National Journal Breakfast, insisting that Luntz is 'a moron'…"
-- From "Frank Luntz," Wikipedia entry.
"No speech about homeland security or Iraq should begin without a reference to 9/11."
-- Frank Luntz's advice to Bush's White House on tying Iraq to 9/11.
But why is Luntz more loathsome and despicable than any other marketing huckster? It's this: The 'rebranding' Frank does for a living may be relatively harmless when selling frozen peas or microwave ovens, but when carried over into the arena of public debate and inserting itself into the affairs of a democratic republic, it is like putting a smiley face on a bottle of cyanide. Well-informed voters, the 'elitists' who still have their skeptical faculties intact, may reject Luntz's catchy but devious phrases and duplicitous words, but the growing number of gullible low-information voters, especially those independents who waver with the slightest breeze, are Frank's real aim. These are the people who don't have the time or inclination to double-check some bit of pleasant-sounding Clean Air Act deceit or demonizing stretch of free word association, such as using 'Iraq,' 9/11' and 'Saddam Hussein' in close proximity to promote a needless war, or the current right-wing trope of continually connecting Obama's name with Hitler, Stalin, fascism, socialism and communism. To the under-informed, where there's smoke there's fire; anything heard repeatedly must have some truth to it, and the bigger the lie the better. In this, Luntz is the ideological descendant of Joseph Goebbels and every bit as dangerous to a free nation.
"…[A] Salon.com article described Luntz as 'possibly the best example of what we could call the pollster pundit: someone who both purports to scientifically poll the opinions of the public, and then also interpret that data to support his own -- in Luntz's case, conservative -- point of view.' Luntz has explained his own methodology as follows: 'Say you poll on an environmental issue, and on eight of the 10 questions the numbers are in your favor. Why release the other two? It's like being a lawyer.'"
-- Media Matters, Sept. 3, 2004.
But Frank has done us an unintentional service by inadvertently revealing that what he's really peddling – miserable wage-slave serfdom in a country under the unregulated corporate dominion of a right-wing Republican plutocracy – is so offensive, damaging and awful that it requires his slick political lexicography and fork-tongued euphemisms to be considered politically acceptable.
And it's encouraging that, even with all of his well-paid efforts over the years, his agenda has still been proven a failure by the indomitable persuasion of daily reality.
It's possible the America of Jefferson, Paine, Franklin and Madison will survive the scourge of Luntzism yet, in spite of all he has done to try and bury it under a trash heap of calculated lies.
© 2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.
"[A]sk a question in the way that you get the right answer."
-- Frank Luntz on his 'fair and balanced' polling methods.
While some readers may chastise me for gross understatement in my title, and I take their point, I decided to keep this clean, or as clean as you can when describing the contents of the sole working Port-O-Potty on free chili and beer night at a baseball game.
What makes Republican word-whacker Frank Luntz my target is that he is an intentional and dedicated deceiver of the public, smart enough to know full well what he's doing, but blithely willing to trot out his wares -- borrowed from the misuse of modern psychological techniques to sell the gullible what they don't need joined with a carnival conman's shell game pitch -- for the temporary benefit of his bank account, while his country slides into a wreckage of divisiveness and debt. If you'd like to find the home base for the decimation of our public speech into ignorant, inflamed, fearful, flag-draped hatred; the revision of our history into a reeking bonanza of selfish suicidal capitalism, evangelical Christian crapola and nasty neoconservative warhawk bilge; and the reduction of our political discourse into so much overheated, oversimplified, covertly racist, sound-bite slag, you can point to three names: the late Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, and the lesser-known, but every bit as important, Frank Luntz as the authors of the meltdown in progress.
"Luntz is glibly amoral, worrying only about whether language has the right effect, not whether it's true."
-- Steven Poole, commenting on Luntz's book "Words That Work" in The Guardian (UK), July 21, 2007.
It was Frank's notion to rename a bill allowing more pollution as the 'Clean Air Act'; it was Luntz who told the GOP to re-label estate taxes as 'death taxes' so that the wealthy paid less while the rest of us took up the slack; it was his demented mind that connected Iraq to 9/11 and instructed Republican pols to always preface any mention of the failed Iraq incursion with '9/11 changed everything'; behind nearly every current and past GOP talking point, endlessly repeated in the Right-Wing Echo Chamber, you'll find Frank's pasty round face, tirelessly choosing just the right words to convince a malleable faction of the American public to eat corporate Republican turds and think it's prime rib.
"While the televised Luntz often displays a disarming sense of humor, is reasonably affable and self-effacing, he is also self-righteous and an endless supplier of disingenuous blather. Watching him in action is to recognize a master of style over substance; emotion trumps fact."
-- Bill Berkowitz, "The Frank Luntz Effect: Spraying Perfume on Dog Turds," Smirking Chimp, Aug. 31, 2007.
Luntz was at it again a couple of weeks ago on C-Span, in a segment from a book fair where he was pushing his latest pile of literary trash. Assembling an audience of supposedly average Americans (by Frank's definition -- the first few rows were populated by disgruntled teabaggers), Luntz demonstrated his low talent for cheesy misdirection by lauding his current employer, Fox News, for being "fair and balanced" – yes, he used those words -- because they allowed him to show that Obama was polling ahead of McCain just prior to the 2008 election. "MSNBC wouldn't have done that," Frank pugnaciously added, omitting the pertinent information that MSNBC, after giving him his own show, had fired Luntz in 2004 when the cable network was alerted that his focus groups and poll results were tainted by his conservative ideology, all while he was lying to the public and MSNBC that his polls were impartial and unbiased.
"To be 'Orwellian' is to speak with absolute clarity, to be succinct, to explain what the event is, to talk about what triggers something happening … and to do so without any pejorative whatsoever."
-- Frank Luntz, redefining the word 'Orwellian' on Terry Gross' NPR 'Fresh Air' show, Jan. 9, 2007.
"Orwellian (ôr wel′ē ən) adjective: of or like the society portrayed by Orwell in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which a totalitarian state exercises almost total control over the public and private activities of the citizens."
-- From Webster's New World College Dictionary.
In the summer of 2008, around the time of the RNC convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul, in an event also shown on C-Span, Frank exposed his grubby game during a session with a Minnesota focus group using his little handheld 'dial-testing' boxes that provide moment-by-moment reaction to the words in a speech. Luntz was plainly beside himself that so many in this crowd were reacting well to Obama's words and, exhibiting obvious irritation, singled out various independents and former Republicans in the audience to interrogate on why they planned to vote for Obama. A side note here: As anyone in the polling business knows, professional pollsters who want a clean, unprejudiced outcome never show emotion to their focus groups. It's well known that such a demonstration can influence the result as many people, politely and without thinking, desire to please the authority figure – in this case, the pollster who assembled the group. Yet here was Luntz figuratively wearing his Red-State armband, his voice tinged with anger and frustration at those who didn't care to vote Republican in 2008. It's to the credit of these sturdy Minnesotans that few were cajoled by Luntz's sweaty performance into changing their vote – the feeling against the GOP was that strong. It's no surprise Luntz was reprimanded in 1997 by the American Association for Public Opinion Research – he refused to provide raw data, allegedly due to 'client confidentiality,' for his claim that the 1994 Republican 'Contract with America' was supported by 60 percent of the American public.
"In 2000 he was censured by the National Council on Public Polls 'for allegedly mischaracterizing on MSNBC the results of focus groups he conducted during the [2000] Republican Convention.' In September 2004, MSNBC dropped Luntz from its planned coverage of that year's presidential debate, following a letter from Media Matters that outlined Luntz's GOP ties and questionable polling methodology … In the wake of the 2008 Presidential election, fellow Republican and prominent pollster Bill McInturff criticized Luntz before journalists at a National Journal Breakfast, insisting that Luntz is 'a moron'…"
-- From "Frank Luntz," Wikipedia entry.
"No speech about homeland security or Iraq should begin without a reference to 9/11."
-- Frank Luntz's advice to Bush's White House on tying Iraq to 9/11.
But why is Luntz more loathsome and despicable than any other marketing huckster? It's this: The 'rebranding' Frank does for a living may be relatively harmless when selling frozen peas or microwave ovens, but when carried over into the arena of public debate and inserting itself into the affairs of a democratic republic, it is like putting a smiley face on a bottle of cyanide. Well-informed voters, the 'elitists' who still have their skeptical faculties intact, may reject Luntz's catchy but devious phrases and duplicitous words, but the growing number of gullible low-information voters, especially those independents who waver with the slightest breeze, are Frank's real aim. These are the people who don't have the time or inclination to double-check some bit of pleasant-sounding Clean Air Act deceit or demonizing stretch of free word association, such as using 'Iraq,' 9/11' and 'Saddam Hussein' in close proximity to promote a needless war, or the current right-wing trope of continually connecting Obama's name with Hitler, Stalin, fascism, socialism and communism. To the under-informed, where there's smoke there's fire; anything heard repeatedly must have some truth to it, and the bigger the lie the better. In this, Luntz is the ideological descendant of Joseph Goebbels and every bit as dangerous to a free nation.
"…[A] Salon.com article described Luntz as 'possibly the best example of what we could call the pollster pundit: someone who both purports to scientifically poll the opinions of the public, and then also interpret that data to support his own -- in Luntz's case, conservative -- point of view.' Luntz has explained his own methodology as follows: 'Say you poll on an environmental issue, and on eight of the 10 questions the numbers are in your favor. Why release the other two? It's like being a lawyer.'"
-- Media Matters, Sept. 3, 2004.
But Frank has done us an unintentional service by inadvertently revealing that what he's really peddling – miserable wage-slave serfdom in a country under the unregulated corporate dominion of a right-wing Republican plutocracy – is so offensive, damaging and awful that it requires his slick political lexicography and fork-tongued euphemisms to be considered politically acceptable.
And it's encouraging that, even with all of his well-paid efforts over the years, his agenda has still been proven a failure by the indomitable persuasion of daily reality.
It's possible the America of Jefferson, Paine, Franklin and Madison will survive the scourge of Luntzism yet, in spite of all he has done to try and bury it under a trash heap of calculated lies.
© 2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Friday, November 27, 2009
Tom Coburn's Shame
If this lunatic has any capacity for shame, that is...
Click on image to enlarge."Thirteen major military and veterans groups have joined forces to try to force one senator — Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma — to release a hold that he has placed on a major veterans benefits bill.
Coburn has been identified by Senate aides as the lawmaker preventing consideration of S 1963, the Veterans’ Caregiver and Omnibus Health Benefits Act of 2009, by using an informal but legal practice of putting a hold on a bill."
-- Rick Maze, "Coburn Named As Senator Holding Up Vets Bill," Marine Corps Times, Nov. 3, 2009.
Finally, sanity prevailed in spite of the embarrassing Coburn...
"The U.S. Senate unanimously approved legislation Thursday to provide financial aid to caregivers of disabled veterans, ending a stand-off with Sen. Tom Coburn that drew national attention." […]
"Coburn had objected for weeks to passing the bill using the Senate’s fast-track process, holding out for the opportunity to offer amendments."
-- Chris Casteel, "U.S. Senate Approves Veterans Bill," The Daily Oklahoman, Nov. 20, 2009.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
The Tattlesnake – Some Things Not to Be Thankful For Edition
Or, What a Curmudgeon Does on Thanksgiving
Major minor aggravations that 'wear on the mind and make you old before your time.'
-- These people who leave comments on various websites claiming they've been to teabag rallies and never once saw anyone who was a racist. Really? Not even a single racist? This is just as incredible as those who say there's not a Republican in the land who hates Obama because he's black -- nope, it's all about his policies, and that's why we're waving this here Confederate flag.
-- The Obama/Hitler, Obama/Stalin comparisons. Seriously, think about this for a minute, paranoid teabaggers: If Obama were really anything like Hitler or Stalin, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, et al, would all be off the air. For that matter, you wouldn't be listening to crazy Michele Bachmann at a teabag rally, because government troops would have closed down the event long before she had a chance to speak. In fact, there wouldn't be any teabag rallies and Bachmann and her GOP ilk would be in jail for treason by now, if not executed. Of all the Obama smears invented by the fringe right, this is, along with the Birther nonsense, the most ludicrous and easiest to disprove.
-- Then there are the good Christopublicans praying for Obama's death or bodily harm. Saved by Jesus were you, you hateful little twit? Did you ever bother to read what the man you worship is quoted as saying about those who judge others, engage in hypocrisy, and misuse his name for spite and revenge or their own advantage? Hint: It's all in the first four books of the New Testament.
-- 'Previously-owned' instead of 'used.' This snooty phrase started with Mercedes and then spread to Cadillac; now it's moved down the chain to Honda – "Buy your previously-owned Honda Accord at…" Is there really anyone besides, say, the faculty at Glenn Beck's University of Something-or-Other, who would read or hear this hokey euphemism and think, "Well, I wouldn't be caught dead buying a used car, but previously-owned is another matter!" This sales-hype excrescence should be purged from the language.
-- "The American people…" Politicians love to preface deplorable, usually Republican, notions with this shabby phrase, i.e.: "The American people don't want health care at the expense of a competitive marketplace!" or "The American people don't want the government to burden business with more regulation!" That's BS – when recovering in the hospital worried over how to pay the bill, 'the American people' don't give a rip about the 'competitive marketplace' and the same goes for regulating 'business,' read 'big corporations,' that just laid thousands of 'the American people' off last month. What's especially galling is this dog-eared expression is usually eructated by some overpaid pinhead who has been working in Washington for most of his or her adult life – as if they would have any idea what America wants, or much care.
-- Monetize. You mean make money from something? Why not just say that instead of employing this bit of yuppie high-hat that I first encountered on the Inner-Tubes. "I'm not trying to make a profit from my website, I'm just trying to monetize it!" People who use this euphemistically 'impactful' term to avoid admitting they are out for money should be 'right-sized' at some 'point in time.'
There are more, but I detect by your drooping eyelids that you've had enough for now. Yeah, go have a Happy Thanksgiving – if you can afford it!
© 2009 RS Janes.
Major minor aggravations that 'wear on the mind and make you old before your time.'
-- These people who leave comments on various websites claiming they've been to teabag rallies and never once saw anyone who was a racist. Really? Not even a single racist? This is just as incredible as those who say there's not a Republican in the land who hates Obama because he's black -- nope, it's all about his policies, and that's why we're waving this here Confederate flag.
-- The Obama/Hitler, Obama/Stalin comparisons. Seriously, think about this for a minute, paranoid teabaggers: If Obama were really anything like Hitler or Stalin, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, et al, would all be off the air. For that matter, you wouldn't be listening to crazy Michele Bachmann at a teabag rally, because government troops would have closed down the event long before she had a chance to speak. In fact, there wouldn't be any teabag rallies and Bachmann and her GOP ilk would be in jail for treason by now, if not executed. Of all the Obama smears invented by the fringe right, this is, along with the Birther nonsense, the most ludicrous and easiest to disprove.
-- Then there are the good Christopublicans praying for Obama's death or bodily harm. Saved by Jesus were you, you hateful little twit? Did you ever bother to read what the man you worship is quoted as saying about those who judge others, engage in hypocrisy, and misuse his name for spite and revenge or their own advantage? Hint: It's all in the first four books of the New Testament.
-- 'Previously-owned' instead of 'used.' This snooty phrase started with Mercedes and then spread to Cadillac; now it's moved down the chain to Honda – "Buy your previously-owned Honda Accord at…" Is there really anyone besides, say, the faculty at Glenn Beck's University of Something-or-Other, who would read or hear this hokey euphemism and think, "Well, I wouldn't be caught dead buying a used car, but previously-owned is another matter!" This sales-hype excrescence should be purged from the language.
-- "The American people…" Politicians love to preface deplorable, usually Republican, notions with this shabby phrase, i.e.: "The American people don't want health care at the expense of a competitive marketplace!" or "The American people don't want the government to burden business with more regulation!" That's BS – when recovering in the hospital worried over how to pay the bill, 'the American people' don't give a rip about the 'competitive marketplace' and the same goes for regulating 'business,' read 'big corporations,' that just laid thousands of 'the American people' off last month. What's especially galling is this dog-eared expression is usually eructated by some overpaid pinhead who has been working in Washington for most of his or her adult life – as if they would have any idea what America wants, or much care.
-- Monetize. You mean make money from something? Why not just say that instead of employing this bit of yuppie high-hat that I first encountered on the Inner-Tubes. "I'm not trying to make a profit from my website, I'm just trying to monetize it!" People who use this euphemistically 'impactful' term to avoid admitting they are out for money should be 'right-sized' at some 'point in time.'
There are more, but I detect by your drooping eyelids that you've had enough for now. Yeah, go have a Happy Thanksgiving – if you can afford it!
© 2009 RS Janes.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The Tattlesnake – Palin: the GOPs Political Poison Pill Edition
"Her agenda was not necessarily to show me in the best light."
-- Sarah Palin to Oprah Winfrey, complaining about Katie Couric's 2008 interview that revealed her to be an uninformed pageant sash, as quoted at NBC's Today Show website, Nov. 16, 2009.
As this quote shows, Sarah Palin still has no idea what the role of the news media is in a Jeffersonian democracy, apparently believing that reporters should have the 'agenda' of lobbing affable Wiffle balls that make her look good rather than exposing a candidate's fitness for office. That she was so vexed by Couric's mild inquiries – asking her what she reads, for instance, becoming in Palin's mind a 'gotcha' question without parallel – and then whining to Oprah that she had just been 'pumped up' by walking a rope line of enthusiastic followers only to encounter the bummerooski of Katie the 'Perky One' with microphone and camera ready to pounce on her with school-test interrogations suited to a spiteful teacher – well, it was just too much to bear!
This, then, is the Beauty Pageant Contestant (BPC) view of the world; you memorize certain attractive-sounding answers, such as advocating world peace or groceries for the hungry, and it's not fair of the judges to delve into what particular set of policies you would promote to achieve those goals. Isn't it enough that you have shown yourself to be a really good caring 'people person' by just desiring such cures for the world's ills?
In the same way, Palin thought it was sufficient that she merely presented herself as informed on a daily basis by newspapers and magazines without actually having to bother to learn some by name or talk knowledgeably about their contents. Isn't it enough that she said she reads all that intellectual stuff, for Pete's sake? Hey, Real America doesn't care – they're too busy shooting wolves from circling Cessnas.
She showed a similar BPC understanding of the law in the campaign of 2008 when she failed to come up with any Supreme Court decision other than Roe v. Wade that entered her memory – but, then, come on -- a real leader can always call on her staff to review such inane details for her, as befits a princess with a yen for higher office, such as Ms. Vice President of America.
As for calling Couric 'The Perky One' – the giddy Sarah often gives irony a hernia from too much stress, but this was an entry worthy of an Olympic record.
The late Kurt Vonnegut would have heartily appreciated the alternately peevishly snippy and wholesome Hockey-Mom vacuity of Sarah Palin. The Tattler can picture him with his kindly grin, the world-weary eyes twinkling in satirical amusement, a Pall Mall with a droopy ash poised in mid-air, observing one of his more incongruous characters come to life and dominating the American political landscape – always slightly absurd, now keeled over into open farce -- promulgated by a national news media that is no longer paid to tell the difference.
For incongruity is the Barracuda's calling card – she supports the infallible efficacy of sexual abstinence for teens while her own 16-year-old daughter swells in unwed pregnancy; she bleats about clean government while papering over her own administration's manifold corruptions; she assaults small-minded cruelty while delivering velvet-gloved blows to those who dare criticize her; she talks of lofty Christian ideals while she's perpetually immersed in petty paybacks; she decries government bailouts while the citizens of her home state accept nearly twice as much in federal money than they pay in taxes; she insinuates darkly of the evils of socialism and nationalization while Alaska annually divides its energy wealth equally among its inhabitants; she natters on about responsibility while refusing to own up to her own mistakes; she deplores politicians abusing their power while she used her office to settle personal scores; she hails freedom while sentencing other members of her gender to do without it; she supports the troops while wanting to prolong their agony in lost wars; she respects tough people who stay in the race, and then quits halfway through her stint as Alaska's governor when either her ambition or her malfeasance, or both, catch up with her. Most of all, she admires honesty while practicing its opposite, either the result of intentional deception or the BPC's natural tendency to slap sweet frosting on the ugly realities of human existence, especially when those realities are embedded in one's own character.
"The idea that this potential talk show host is considered seriously for the Republican nomination, believe me, it will never happen."
-- David Brooks on ABC's "This Week," as quoted by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post, Nov. 15, 2009.
Palin is the perfect empty Twenty-First Century candidate for a slogging-along political party devoid of ideas and unsuited to the shift in spirit that has quietly rumbled through the nation. Contrary to the bet-against-it Beltway Conventional Wisdom of the New York Times' David Brooks and other such pundit glitterati, Sarah has an unobstructed path to the GOP nomination for president in 2012 by dint of sheer Oprah-certified celebrity and the support of Fox News and the Limbaugh Brigade of radio regressives, halfwit teabag party revelers, and her appeal to the Jeffrey Hunter Jesus bedazzled – in other words, the 20 percent of America that has "I'm with Stupid" with an arrow pointing up emblazoned on the backs of their 'Obama Joker' t-shirts, all of whom reliably vote in Republican primaries.
"[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican Party."
-- David Brooks, as quoted by Danny Shea at Huffington Post, Oct. 10, 2008.
The Cleopatra GOP of Reagan, Bush and Cheney that sought the attentions and money of the Corporate Empire to further its own ambitions is on a suicide mission beyond the recall of sane conservatives, and Sarah will be the lethal asp to fulfill their deadly destiny. But Brooks and the Beltway Punditeers are right about one thing: Palin has approximately the same chance of winning in a general presidential election as her daughter Bristol has of regaining her virginity in an Abstinence Only class and she is certain death to the GOP.
Somewhere, perhaps, Kurt is flicking the ash off his cigarette and appreciating this risible spectacle with a wheezy laugh; the death party is finally being put out of its misery, led to its doom by a half-smart woman whose most prominent qualifications for high office are that she blundered into a small-state governorship with the help of ardent Christopublicans, was chosen by a desperate old man to rescue his fading presidential hopes, and once pranced down a runway in a forced smile and a bathing suit only to lose the crown, which established, and continues to guide, her approach to politics -- now inseparable from that of her benighted party.
© 2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.
-- Sarah Palin to Oprah Winfrey, complaining about Katie Couric's 2008 interview that revealed her to be an uninformed pageant sash, as quoted at NBC's Today Show website, Nov. 16, 2009.
As this quote shows, Sarah Palin still has no idea what the role of the news media is in a Jeffersonian democracy, apparently believing that reporters should have the 'agenda' of lobbing affable Wiffle balls that make her look good rather than exposing a candidate's fitness for office. That she was so vexed by Couric's mild inquiries – asking her what she reads, for instance, becoming in Palin's mind a 'gotcha' question without parallel – and then whining to Oprah that she had just been 'pumped up' by walking a rope line of enthusiastic followers only to encounter the bummerooski of Katie the 'Perky One' with microphone and camera ready to pounce on her with school-test interrogations suited to a spiteful teacher – well, it was just too much to bear!
This, then, is the Beauty Pageant Contestant (BPC) view of the world; you memorize certain attractive-sounding answers, such as advocating world peace or groceries for the hungry, and it's not fair of the judges to delve into what particular set of policies you would promote to achieve those goals. Isn't it enough that you have shown yourself to be a really good caring 'people person' by just desiring such cures for the world's ills?
In the same way, Palin thought it was sufficient that she merely presented herself as informed on a daily basis by newspapers and magazines without actually having to bother to learn some by name or talk knowledgeably about their contents. Isn't it enough that she said she reads all that intellectual stuff, for Pete's sake? Hey, Real America doesn't care – they're too busy shooting wolves from circling Cessnas.
She showed a similar BPC understanding of the law in the campaign of 2008 when she failed to come up with any Supreme Court decision other than Roe v. Wade that entered her memory – but, then, come on -- a real leader can always call on her staff to review such inane details for her, as befits a princess with a yen for higher office, such as Ms. Vice President of America.
As for calling Couric 'The Perky One' – the giddy Sarah often gives irony a hernia from too much stress, but this was an entry worthy of an Olympic record.
The late Kurt Vonnegut would have heartily appreciated the alternately peevishly snippy and wholesome Hockey-Mom vacuity of Sarah Palin. The Tattler can picture him with his kindly grin, the world-weary eyes twinkling in satirical amusement, a Pall Mall with a droopy ash poised in mid-air, observing one of his more incongruous characters come to life and dominating the American political landscape – always slightly absurd, now keeled over into open farce -- promulgated by a national news media that is no longer paid to tell the difference.
For incongruity is the Barracuda's calling card – she supports the infallible efficacy of sexual abstinence for teens while her own 16-year-old daughter swells in unwed pregnancy; she bleats about clean government while papering over her own administration's manifold corruptions; she assaults small-minded cruelty while delivering velvet-gloved blows to those who dare criticize her; she talks of lofty Christian ideals while she's perpetually immersed in petty paybacks; she decries government bailouts while the citizens of her home state accept nearly twice as much in federal money than they pay in taxes; she insinuates darkly of the evils of socialism and nationalization while Alaska annually divides its energy wealth equally among its inhabitants; she natters on about responsibility while refusing to own up to her own mistakes; she deplores politicians abusing their power while she used her office to settle personal scores; she hails freedom while sentencing other members of her gender to do without it; she supports the troops while wanting to prolong their agony in lost wars; she respects tough people who stay in the race, and then quits halfway through her stint as Alaska's governor when either her ambition or her malfeasance, or both, catch up with her. Most of all, she admires honesty while practicing its opposite, either the result of intentional deception or the BPC's natural tendency to slap sweet frosting on the ugly realities of human existence, especially when those realities are embedded in one's own character.
"The idea that this potential talk show host is considered seriously for the Republican nomination, believe me, it will never happen."
-- David Brooks on ABC's "This Week," as quoted by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post, Nov. 15, 2009.
Palin is the perfect empty Twenty-First Century candidate for a slogging-along political party devoid of ideas and unsuited to the shift in spirit that has quietly rumbled through the nation. Contrary to the bet-against-it Beltway Conventional Wisdom of the New York Times' David Brooks and other such pundit glitterati, Sarah has an unobstructed path to the GOP nomination for president in 2012 by dint of sheer Oprah-certified celebrity and the support of Fox News and the Limbaugh Brigade of radio regressives, halfwit teabag party revelers, and her appeal to the Jeffrey Hunter Jesus bedazzled – in other words, the 20 percent of America that has "I'm with Stupid" with an arrow pointing up emblazoned on the backs of their 'Obama Joker' t-shirts, all of whom reliably vote in Republican primaries.
"[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican Party."
-- David Brooks, as quoted by Danny Shea at Huffington Post, Oct. 10, 2008.
The Cleopatra GOP of Reagan, Bush and Cheney that sought the attentions and money of the Corporate Empire to further its own ambitions is on a suicide mission beyond the recall of sane conservatives, and Sarah will be the lethal asp to fulfill their deadly destiny. But Brooks and the Beltway Punditeers are right about one thing: Palin has approximately the same chance of winning in a general presidential election as her daughter Bristol has of regaining her virginity in an Abstinence Only class and she is certain death to the GOP.
Somewhere, perhaps, Kurt is flicking the ash off his cigarette and appreciating this risible spectacle with a wheezy laugh; the death party is finally being put out of its misery, led to its doom by a half-smart woman whose most prominent qualifications for high office are that she blundered into a small-state governorship with the help of ardent Christopublicans, was chosen by a desperate old man to rescue his fading presidential hopes, and once pranced down a runway in a forced smile and a bathing suit only to lose the crown, which established, and continues to guide, her approach to politics -- now inseparable from that of her benighted party.
© 2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Friday, November 06, 2009
The Tattlesnake – Post-Election Portents and Predictions Edition
…And How the Big Media Speculators Got It Wrong Again
The usual Big Media Punchinellos were out in force the past few days, blaring and bleating the Beltway Conventional Wisdom that the Democratic Party's loss of the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey are a sure referendum on Obama Administration policies. This is the sort of doomed facile reasoning found in the bottom of a Washington cocktail glass typical of Our Pundit Class who, from non-existent Iraq WMD to Fred Thompson's popularity with voters, can never seem to fit the square peg in the round hole, pound though they might.
A brief review of the Dem candidates in VA and NJ clearly shows why progressives and like-minded independents didn't bother to vote for Creigh Deeds in Virginia or Jon Corzine in New Jersey, and it had nothing to do with Obama. For various reasons explained below, they were both terrible candidates.
Creigh Deeds: In an era of change, Deeds was a shambling throwback, a dismal campaign clunker with four flat tires, who rejected Obama's advice and help until it dawned on him in the final weeks he was going to lose in a landslide. He ran a miserably negative campaign, devoid of ideas, and presented his pap on toast so dry even peppy Dem loyalists fought to stay awake during his speeches. A Dem Blue Dog so blue he threatened to opt out of a public option should it become available to Virginians, he was nearly as conservative as his GOP opponent Bob McDonnell. Why leave the house to vote when the choice is between a Republican and a Dem who thinks like a Republican? Seen clearly, this was a referendum, and portent of the future, for Blue Dog Dems rather than President Obama.
Jon Corzine: The one-time US Senator who was just bounced from the governor's mansion is a Goldman Sachs Golden Boy who made piles of money on Wall Street and insists on spending it on vanity campaigns. Why he doesn't just buy a new summer home or sumptuous overpriced yacht instead of squadering his fortune to impose himself on our political process is beyond me, but Corzine has never shown much talent for governing once elected, and what few things he has accomplished were always moderate to the point of invisibility. Jon is the kind of drab Dudley Do-Nothing the Democratic Party needs to send packing, if they expect to keep the majority in the future. Again, the portentiousness of Corzine's defeat was not his affiliation with Obama's policies, but the yellow line up the middle of his back from avoiding tenaciously either the right or left lane. He will not be missed, at least by this writer.
The point? Neither of them were progressives and didn't stir independents or liberal Dems to go out and vote for them.
And now to stare into the crystal – but not Kristol – ball for some predictions on the Republican winners of those two elections:
Bob McDonnell: The Republican who just won the governor's race in Virginia is a graduate of Pat Robertson's Regent University and has been steeped in Christopublican politics his entire adult life. McDonnell campaigned on a Chuck-E-Cheesy slogan of "Bob's 4 Jobs" but when Virginians discover Bob's secret plan to create jobs is to pray twice a day, they'll be anxious to dump him in the next election. Either that or, Ted Haggard clone that he is, he'll get caught up in some lurid sex scandal, perhaps involving farm animals – male farm animals, of course, in a stall in the Minneapolis airport. "Hey, how did you sneak that horse in here?!"
Chris Christie: The GOP candidate who swept Corzine from the New Jersey governor's mansion was once a NJ federal prosecutor, appointed by the Bush/Rove locus of governmental crime. While in that job he had been repeatedly tied to corruption and malfeasance, including handing out no-bid contracts to friends, using his office to help his brother's shaky Wall Street firm, connections to a Genovese Family crime boss (Tino "The Greek" Fiumara), and he was censured for refusing to prosecute Bristol-Myers-Squibb for criminal fraud, instead letting them pay a $311,000 fine and donate $5 million to his alma mater, Seton Hall University School of Law. (Considering the billions B-M-S makes, the fine and donation were a slap on the wrist.) And keep in mind it's New Jersey, next to Texas the most corrupt state in the union, and this guy has been a major player in the Bush mold -- it's only a matter of time before he sells some indulgence, takes a bribe, or springs some crook and then he's on his way out the door. The only thing you can say for Christie is that he was smart enough to refuse Sarah Palin's offer to campaign for him.
Meanwhile, the real action was in New York's 23rd Congressional District, the most reliably conservative and Republican in the state. Even after GOP bigwigs like Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Dick Armey, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck sang his praises, Conservative Party candidate Doug "The Bullet's in My Top Pocket" Hoffman was defeated by liberal Democrat and union-supporter Bill Owens. The Republican civil war has started in earnest and I think when the Christopublican-Teabagger wing of the GOP nominates Palin in 2012, that will be it -- many Republicans will pull out and vote Libertarian or nominate their own candidate, someone like Colin Powell. When Palin is beaten by the largest landslide in American history, bringing many other Republicans down with her, the GOP will be no more, just as the Whigs became extinct when Lincoln was elected in 1860. I don't know what will replace the GOP, but I'll bet it won't have 'Republican' in the name.
If you're looking for a bellwether of future elections and the direction the country's heading, this upstate New York congressional election presents a far better portent than do the elections in Virginia and New Jersey, but you'd never know that from watching our puerile Punditocracy diddle itself dizzy on nationwide television.
Contact the author at editor@ltsaloon.org
© 2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.
The usual Big Media Punchinellos were out in force the past few days, blaring and bleating the Beltway Conventional Wisdom that the Democratic Party's loss of the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey are a sure referendum on Obama Administration policies. This is the sort of doomed facile reasoning found in the bottom of a Washington cocktail glass typical of Our Pundit Class who, from non-existent Iraq WMD to Fred Thompson's popularity with voters, can never seem to fit the square peg in the round hole, pound though they might.
A brief review of the Dem candidates in VA and NJ clearly shows why progressives and like-minded independents didn't bother to vote for Creigh Deeds in Virginia or Jon Corzine in New Jersey, and it had nothing to do with Obama. For various reasons explained below, they were both terrible candidates.
Creigh Deeds: In an era of change, Deeds was a shambling throwback, a dismal campaign clunker with four flat tires, who rejected Obama's advice and help until it dawned on him in the final weeks he was going to lose in a landslide. He ran a miserably negative campaign, devoid of ideas, and presented his pap on toast so dry even peppy Dem loyalists fought to stay awake during his speeches. A Dem Blue Dog so blue he threatened to opt out of a public option should it become available to Virginians, he was nearly as conservative as his GOP opponent Bob McDonnell. Why leave the house to vote when the choice is between a Republican and a Dem who thinks like a Republican? Seen clearly, this was a referendum, and portent of the future, for Blue Dog Dems rather than President Obama.
Jon Corzine: The one-time US Senator who was just bounced from the governor's mansion is a Goldman Sachs Golden Boy who made piles of money on Wall Street and insists on spending it on vanity campaigns. Why he doesn't just buy a new summer home or sumptuous overpriced yacht instead of squadering his fortune to impose himself on our political process is beyond me, but Corzine has never shown much talent for governing once elected, and what few things he has accomplished were always moderate to the point of invisibility. Jon is the kind of drab Dudley Do-Nothing the Democratic Party needs to send packing, if they expect to keep the majority in the future. Again, the portentiousness of Corzine's defeat was not his affiliation with Obama's policies, but the yellow line up the middle of his back from avoiding tenaciously either the right or left lane. He will not be missed, at least by this writer.
The point? Neither of them were progressives and didn't stir independents or liberal Dems to go out and vote for them.
And now to stare into the crystal – but not Kristol – ball for some predictions on the Republican winners of those two elections:
Bob McDonnell: The Republican who just won the governor's race in Virginia is a graduate of Pat Robertson's Regent University and has been steeped in Christopublican politics his entire adult life. McDonnell campaigned on a Chuck-E-Cheesy slogan of "Bob's 4 Jobs" but when Virginians discover Bob's secret plan to create jobs is to pray twice a day, they'll be anxious to dump him in the next election. Either that or, Ted Haggard clone that he is, he'll get caught up in some lurid sex scandal, perhaps involving farm animals – male farm animals, of course, in a stall in the Minneapolis airport. "Hey, how did you sneak that horse in here?!"
Chris Christie: The GOP candidate who swept Corzine from the New Jersey governor's mansion was once a NJ federal prosecutor, appointed by the Bush/Rove locus of governmental crime. While in that job he had been repeatedly tied to corruption and malfeasance, including handing out no-bid contracts to friends, using his office to help his brother's shaky Wall Street firm, connections to a Genovese Family crime boss (Tino "The Greek" Fiumara), and he was censured for refusing to prosecute Bristol-Myers-Squibb for criminal fraud, instead letting them pay a $311,000 fine and donate $5 million to his alma mater, Seton Hall University School of Law. (Considering the billions B-M-S makes, the fine and donation were a slap on the wrist.) And keep in mind it's New Jersey, next to Texas the most corrupt state in the union, and this guy has been a major player in the Bush mold -- it's only a matter of time before he sells some indulgence, takes a bribe, or springs some crook and then he's on his way out the door. The only thing you can say for Christie is that he was smart enough to refuse Sarah Palin's offer to campaign for him.
Meanwhile, the real action was in New York's 23rd Congressional District, the most reliably conservative and Republican in the state. Even after GOP bigwigs like Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Dick Armey, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck sang his praises, Conservative Party candidate Doug "The Bullet's in My Top Pocket" Hoffman was defeated by liberal Democrat and union-supporter Bill Owens. The Republican civil war has started in earnest and I think when the Christopublican-Teabagger wing of the GOP nominates Palin in 2012, that will be it -- many Republicans will pull out and vote Libertarian or nominate their own candidate, someone like Colin Powell. When Palin is beaten by the largest landslide in American history, bringing many other Republicans down with her, the GOP will be no more, just as the Whigs became extinct when Lincoln was elected in 1860. I don't know what will replace the GOP, but I'll bet it won't have 'Republican' in the name.
If you're looking for a bellwether of future elections and the direction the country's heading, this upstate New York congressional election presents a far better portent than do the elections in Virginia and New Jersey, but you'd never know that from watching our puerile Punditocracy diddle itself dizzy on nationwide television.
Contact the author at editor@ltsaloon.org
© 2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Sunday, November 01, 2009
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