Monday, August 15

The World's Longest Praeteritio

YOU might've heard we had a disaster at the Indiana State Fair this weekend. Or maybe you're just close enough to receive our broadcast transmissions, in which case you know we had a tragedy. * People have died, and dozens more had their lives altered in an instant, and we do not mean to detract from the very real hurt that a relative few people suffered, while some lie in intensive care and others wait to be buried, just so we can talk about how the rest of us feel about it.

At some point, I suspect that a lot of the survivors are going to recognize that "showing respect" at this moment was perhaps no more important than calling Premature Bullshit on Mitch Daniels when he gets up the next morning to announce the whole thing was just some freaky freak of Nature, no one could seen it comin', awfully sorry for your loss. Settle early.

I'm not even gonna start, except to say it was particularly telegenic coming in the early light of the first daylight investigators had had since the fevered minutes after the stage roof collapsed. In other words, Daniels didn't know that for a fact, let alone the at-best-a-disputable-conclusion he tried to fob off as fact. Ain't science wonderful?

And just because I'm thinking of it, I think it's fine if local anchorpersons would like to add their own opinions about the nature of the Deity and his amenability to prayer to stories of someone else's pain. And I'm sure that all those "God blesses" and "We're praying for youses" were heartfelt. My question, though, is what would be the reaction if you signed off a telephone interview with the victim of the disaster, or his immediately family, with a cheery "Well, it's all in the stars now" or "Hum. Guess that's Fate" ? "Better luck next kalpa."

Personally, I think if there was a God She'd'a made sure Mitch Daniels was a candidate for the Republican nod, just to enjoy him figuring out what to do about Perry just like a sane person. I really, really, wish we could all see Daniels under pressure to some Bible salesman with good hair and a vegetable-crisper IQ. I'd love to see him have to make something of it, for once, that a good chunk of his Randian Dream Party are Jesus-mazed snake handlers with a magic view of the economy. And everything else.

It's Down to Romney! Bachmann!! and Perry!! say Dan Baltz and Philip Rucker, which I guess is as good a reason to believe it as any. [exclamation points mine]

Bachmann? How does Bachmann stay in the race if Perry's a factor? Her only hope--if she actually does want a nomination--is to start having hookers rappel into his elevator after it's stopped between floors. Does anyone--even a Beltway pundit--actually believe that Perry and Bachmann are going to slug it out for the same delegates while Romney races off? Well, I guess you might as well ask if anyone imagines that stupid-ass Ames poll has any meaning whatsoever.

You've just got to love, or puke at the mention of, how Rick Perry became the Instantly Credible Candidate when "credible" is code for--no, hell, it's not even code, it's synonymous with--"rich donor list". I mean, there's nothing else aside from this constant artificial excitement over what bright, shiny, and fur-wrapped object has grabbed the Religious Teabagger focus du jour. The Texas Miracle--interesting, by the way; a year ago, when the now in decline Establishment Republicans for Mitch--and Mitch himself, I think it goes without saying--touted Indiana as having the best employment record in the Abysmal Obama Economy. Daniels got away with it. Perry won't.

And don't get me wrong: Rick Perry is religious scam artist, a public liar, and a neo-confederate fuck melon. And he could be Your Next President. None of those things is mutually exclusive of the other. Hell, in the last three decades they're positively correlated. Rick Perry sounds like he stands for something. It may not matter anymore just What that happens to be. Democrats quit doing that full-time in 1981, after spending the previous decade apologizing for George McGovern and ridiculing Jimmy Carter. Sorry, but the possibility of President Rick Perry exists today only because Democrats wouldn't stand up for themselves after losing to Richard Fucking Milhous Nixon.

I hate to keep bringing it up, but that's that. Democrats decided in 1972 that Liberalism had run its course; in 1974 Democratic Senators decided it was too costly to get the money out of politics. 2006 was just a re-capitulation; Democrats placed in a two-house majority because of an extremely unpopular war couldn't find the wherewithal to defund it, let alone bring anyone home or hold the Worst President in History accountable. Democrats are not going to take their rightful place as the majority party in the US until they chop the Republicans off at the knees. That's a requirement. Now, of course, the GOP has gone so far Right it's in danger of falling into a Horowitz Singularity and emerging as weirdly religious Trotskyites, and the Dems will figure once again that sooner or later they'll return to power on the backs of what morons their opponents are. Meanwhile, Rick Perry sounds like he believes in something. Barack Obama sounds like he believes in giving speeches.

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* Why is it that the very people who keep you informed of Our Failing Schools seem obligated to remind the viewer, or reader, that the information comes from someone who quit paying attention in junior high school? Except to social events, student government, and fashion tips, I mean.

8 comments:

the yellow fringe said...

I thought Gingrich did great, hell his 2.3% to McCotter's 0.2% and Palin's 0%, he beat those two like a 6 year old in Wall Mart.
For Bachmann, she has to hold on to Iowa lead and win it in a real contest, the primary, which she might do, but then they move from an 80+% conservative voting primary mob to New Hampshire where it is only in the teens, she may have to stick her fairy husband on the stump there to make good.
(I went through DesMoines a few weeks back, jumped off I-35 for gas and McDonalds abuse, waltzed into it and it's blaring hymnals and Jesus Rock. I used their bathroom and went to the store and picked up some yogurt and apples and drove on.

satch said...

It may be some consolation that, back in the day, Phil Gramm also had a helluva donor list.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Democrats decided in 1972 that Liberalism had run its course.

Jimmy Carter seems pretty liberal now. (I do remember not thinking that back in the day, however.)
~

Anonymous said...

I feel for you brother.
You hit the nail on the head.

Do you think that when Keynes said "In the long run we are all dead." he was some how alluding to 2012 when one of these GOP douche bags would have a 50/50 shot of killing us all?

We are so f*cked.

Jim McCulloch said...

I live in Austin and I have watched Rick Perry for a decade. He is an entirely resentment-driven snake who is possibly the most cynical politician ever to emerge from the ooze of Texas politics, and the one least hampered by a personal belief system. You'd think that's not possible, and you'd be wrong. He never forgets a real or imagined slight. His unusual hatred of higher education is that of a D-minus Texas A&M student stung by grades that reflected performance. He is determined to eradicate any vestige of the higher learning in the state that does not follow the business plan of the University of Phoenix. He will go down any road that he thinks leads to power. Pray that he takes the wrong one. He is inarticulate but somehow doubly dangerous despite, or because, of that. If he were a Mexican he would probably be the leader of the Zeta drug cartel.

prairie curmudgeon said...

You are getting to the heart of our problem -- we are fated to following "the show must go on". Ignore all the flashing red lights, close your eyes and step on the accelerator.

Freak storm my ass. Cut corners, bump the take, and pray and grand stand when shit happens. Kind of a mini 9/11.

The dems could have pulled the hostage lever and rescinded the Bush tax cuts when the first vote to fund the wars came up. Or better yet, they wouldn't have let Texan militarism capture the national security meme and thereby fulfill all of Osama's dreams of weakening our national security in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We got the disease bad. We know better yet somehow by willful delusion and capture of the imagination we are ruled by those bad spores that have come to fruition and just gotta be shot off. When America has a woody there just ain't no cutting its root.

Maybe the best prescription would be for everyone to just sit down and get stoned and think about this shit.

Aaron said...

"Maybe the best prescription would be for everyone to just sit down and get stoned and think about this shit."

I'm still in favor of everyone dropping acid and going skinnydipping, personally. The sooner, the better.

Anonymous said...

Grover Norquist should be happy that the temporary stage makers aren't "hampered" by all of that regulation business. Remember, he wants to drown the government down the bathtub.