What’s wrong with this image

Honestly, I am not sure what this says about Fox news or about the level of education that they require from their assistant producers, but next time I recommend that they don’t just google “Douglas” and throw the firs thing that looks “old timey enough” on the screen.

Morons.

Obama plants a devastating seed

Yeah yeah yeah Obama buddied up to a slum lord and Hillary worked for Wal-Mart. So what. Still, it is fun watching these two tear ass into each other. Don’t you just get the feeling that Hillary wants to say “Obama come back in 10 years when you’ve paid your dues – and by the way nobody has paid dues like I have” and Obama just wants to say “Yeah, I can come back in ten years but you’d still be a bitch who couldn’t get elected dog catcher in half the states in the country.”

Or maybe it’s just me.

Aaaaaaaanyway, what struck me last night is the little bomb that Obama shrewdly sent out in a seemingly off the cuff, heat of the moment exchange with Hillary. I am not sure if he planned to say that he doesn’t know who he’s running against sometimes but even if it was unplanned it was a pretty clever tactic.

As Vincent from Pulp Fiction would say, it breaks down like this:

Clearly, Bill Clinton is a huge asset for Hillary. He’s one of, if not the best campaigners of his generation and wildly popular even among people who probably don’t even like Hillary. So Obama tries to turn that strength into a weakness by implying that Hillary is letting her husband do her campaigning (read: fighting) for her.

A “when the going gets tough, you have to run to your man do your work for you” implication like this could be devastating if it takes hold because it touches on both the nepotistical aspects of Hillary’s candidacy as well as subtly deploying the old gender stereotype that women aren’t strong enough to be president.

I am also sure that Hillary is smart enough that she picked up on what Obama was trying to do and it pissed her off even more than she already is. Imagine, after everything she has been through over the years, now having to face down this little twerp who gets pass after pass from the adoring media, it’s just terrible and yet totally entertaining to watch.

It may not happen but do not be surprised if one day she just ups and loses her shit on whomever is standing around her at the time. I just hope that when it happens, 1. the cameras are rolling and 2. she isn’t the President of the United States of America.

Common sense words from the New Hampshire debates

Some of the best material coming out of the Republican and Democrat debates in New Hampshire came from the candidates with little or nothing to lose. Not a surprise, but it is unfortunate that the front runners cannot exhibit the same candor, the same degree of common sense.

Beginning with his comments on the Bush doctrine, Ron Paul said this:

“Well, I certainly agreed with his foreign policy that he ran on and that we as Republicans won in the year 2000 — you know, the humble foreign policy, no nation-building, don’t be the policeman of the world. And we were strongly critical of the policy of the Clinton administration, that did the opposite. And we fell short. Of course, the excuse is that 9/11 changed everything, but the Bush doctrine of preemptive war is not a minor change. This is huge. This is the first time we as a nation accept as our policy that we start the wars. I don’t understand this. And that all options are on the table to go after Iran? This — this is not — this is not necessary. These are third-world nations. They’re not capable.

“But I think it’s the misunderstanding or the disagreements that we’ve had in this debate along the campaign trail is the — the nature of the threat. I’m as concerned about the nature of the threat of terrorism as anybody, if not more so. But they don’t attack us because we’re free and prosperous. And there are radicals in all elements on — in — in all religions that will result to violence. But if we don’t understand that the reaction is — is because we invade their countries, we — and occupy their countries, we have bases in their country, and that we haven’t done it just since 9/11, but we have done that a long time.

“I mean, it was the Air Force base in Saudi Arabia before 9/11 that was given as the excuse. If we don’t understand that, we can’t win this war against terrorism.”

And this is among the reasons he is not invited to the Republican debate on Fox News. He couldn’t care less about Republican ideology. Largely due to the fact that he hasn’t always been a Republican, I suppose. As a friend of mine points out – “Why doesn’t he just say we should legalize marijuana? He could totally get away with it!”

Charlie later brought up the question of how can we afford a trillion-dollar war and not afford to provide healthcare for everyone, and Ron Paul once again spoke with logic and reason:

“Charlie, you really answered the question — you answered it in your question, because you said how can we afford a trillion-dollar war and we can’t afford health care? Well, that’s the reason. The resources are going overseas. We’re fighting a trillion- dollar war, and we shouldn’t be doing it. Those resources should be spent back here at home.”

He went on to criticize economic and monetary policy:

“We run up the deficits. We tax. We borrow. We borrow from the Chinese. We can’t borrow enough. Then what do we do? We print the money, and then you wonder where the inflation comes? The value of the dollar goes down and prices go up where the government gets involved in certain things, like housing or medical care or education. Prices are skyrocketing. So you have to deal with the monetary issue to solve the problem of the medical issue.”

He may lack the poise, polish, youth, or looks of his peers, but he speaks from his heart and his head without letting ideological spew get in the way. He won’t win, so what does he have to lose?

On Charlie’s question on the rising price of oil, and whether anyone wanted to simply state the truth about the future price of oil, and that it isn’t going to get any better:

“I’ll be glad to answer that question because it’s something I talk about all the time and it’s a very important question. The Wall Street Journal yesterday had a very good chart that explains this. If you look at the price of oil in the last 10 years, if you look at it in terms of dollars, it went up 350 percent. If you look at it in Euros, it went up about 200 percent. If you look at it in the price of gold, it stayed flat. It’s the inflation, it’s the printing of money, it’s the destruction of the value of the dollar.

“Added onto this, the notion that we go to protect our oil — oil was $27 when we went over there to get the oil and protect the oil and take the oil from Iraq. There’s less than — there’s less than about half the production now in Iraq right now and we’re threatening Iran, and that pushes prices up. It pushes up the concept of supply and demand.

“But you can’t deal with the price of oil without dealing with the supply and demand of dollars. When you devalue the dollar — and the dollar is going down every day, and the further the dollar goes down, the higher the prices of oil going up. We have to understand that. “

Again attacking the fiscal policy of the current administration. What I’d like to hear is how he proposes to solve this problem. Unfortunately, Ron Paul doesn’t get enough mic time to outline his “policy for change”. Since change is the watchword for the next month or so. He has some additional commentary on the importance of understanding monetary policy on his site.

More thoughts on this, and other common sense coming out of the debates.

Who are ‘they?’

You know, they said this day would never come. They said our sights were set too high. They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose. – Barack Obama, Iowa Jan. 3, 2008.

One question, Barack – who are ‘they?’ Sure in your next paragraph you call them ‘the cynics’ but that’s really just what ‘they’ are, not who ‘they’ are. So who are these people, you know the dastardly ones who have been holding us up from enjoying the sweet sweet sunshine and flowery goodness that we really should have been experiencing all along? Clearly a lot of stuff is their fault, I mean, dividing and disillusioning an entire country – these are obviously bad people. So who are ‘they?’

For John Edwards, ‘they’ are all the greedy corporations and the fat cat lobbyists that apparently own every senator and congressman in Washington D.C. (except for him.)

For Hillary, well she doesn’t say so but I’m pretty sure she’d tell you that ‘they’ is whomever the hell you, dear voter, want them to be as long as it gets her enough votes to beat the crap out of John and Barack come Tuesday, Feb. 5th. (Is it just me or is she the blonde Henry Kissinger?)

Well, I think I know who ‘they’ is and I think I have some bad news because ‘they’ are not OPEC. ‘They’ are not Osama Bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahri (although the sooner we stake both their wretched heads on pikes at the entrance to New York harbor the better off we’ll all be).

And, sorry Mitt and Huck but ‘they’ are also definitely not a bunch of Mexican busboys working twice as hard as everyone else in this country just so that they can buy food for their kids. I am also pretty sure that they are most certainly not two people who love each other and just want to be left alone to get married.

‘They’ are us. That’s right – us. We are the ones who are gleefully celebrating our 401K s going up up up because they are fat with investments in John’s greedy corporations. These would be the same corporations that need to keep their stock price up so that we will invest in them and they won’t have to layoff their employees (you know, employees like us).

We are the ones driving the cars that sent oil to $100 a barrel yesterday. And we are the ones who let people like Dick Cheney stick around just because he’s really good at scaring the crap out of 50% of the country. Ok, he actually scares the crap out of the other 50% but for different reasons.

And while we are at it, we are also the ones who are getting fatter and older and demanding that medical science prioritize our erections and our self-inflicted diabetes over the easy cheap stuff like pre-natal care for poor women.

So John, Barack and Hillary (ok, maybe not you Hillary, you are just too far gone) why don’t you guys stop pandering to us and start telling us that the country is in a mess, it’s going to get worse and that the only way to fix it is for all of us to start making sacrifices and to stop letting our fears make our choices for us. This may not be your best strategy for winning the presidency but, if you want your campaign and your presidency to mean anything, then trying to stop the country from getting fatter, lazier and stoopider would be an amazing legacy.

John, Mitt, Mike and Rudy well, you guys need to just stop hating people because of who they sleep with or where they were born. Let’s just start there.

As the turnout numbers from Iowa showed last night, this might be the first election that the AARP, the NRA, the UAW or the Southern Baptist Convention (pick your favorite villain, odds are that you or someone you know gives them money – it’s us that we are talking about after all) can’t just go ahead and rig the election at the expense of the rest of the country. It would be a shame if who ever wins does it by dividing, demonizing and coddling a select few while the folks who weren’t on the winning side got to look forward to 4 more years of picking up the tab.