The next time Scott Brown shows up at some High School to bloviate, I'd love to see some petite blonde girlie girl stand up and ask him "Let me get this straight, you are fine if I wanna have a pistol, but if I need bith control pills then it's a whole mishaugas??"
And if some other enterprising adolescent could video the Senator's "response" and post it to Youtube whether good or ill, that would be the crowning touch.
Not that I have a lot of high school kids in my aud...but the idea is still funny nonetheless.
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Never before has one candidate for President been so
been so diminished by mere victory as Mitt Romney.
The former viceroy keeps spending and winning (winning ugly to be sure, but victory all the same) and the GOP base keeps backing away from him.
Rick Santorum is a nasty twitchy little freak.
Newt Gingrich a morbidly obese political voluptuary...
Ron Paul lives in a fantasy world.
But to a man they all keep grinding away at Romney no matter what the outcome the night before.
Romney ought to have put them all away long ago, but alas Mitt is a jobber at heart he just cannot prevail in a fair fight.
It is just plainly strange how Willard Mitt Romney excites such truculent intransigence in other candidates. By now the sweet strains of "Come to Jesus" ought to be heard in the GOP primary, but right now it's nothing but three different versions of the "Ride of the Valkyries".
The former viceroy keeps spending and winning (winning ugly to be sure, but victory all the same) and the GOP base keeps backing away from him.
Rick Santorum is a nasty twitchy little freak.
Newt Gingrich a morbidly obese political voluptuary...
Ron Paul lives in a fantasy world.
But to a man they all keep grinding away at Romney no matter what the outcome the night before.
Romney ought to have put them all away long ago, but alas Mitt is a jobber at heart he just cannot prevail in a fair fight.
It is just plainly strange how Willard Mitt Romney excites such truculent intransigence in other candidates. By now the sweet strains of "Come to Jesus" ought to be heard in the GOP primary, but right now it's nothing but three different versions of the "Ride of the Valkyries".
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
It is SUPER Tuesday!
Of course we all have the ill fortune to live in a politically marginalized state, I think CNN will run the primary results from Dogpatch, Erewhon, The Commonwealth of Brigadoon and Barsoom before they get to Massachusetts. We will be lucky if the final numbers run before the Farm Report tomorrow morning.
But that is no excuse, if Massachusetts is dismissed & disliked we still need to get out there and cast our ballots like a free people.
Monday, March 05, 2012
Tomorrow is the Massachusetts Presidential Primary...
a political event that has receded to the very stern of everyone's mind, active measures must be taken repeatedly to remind the electorate to vote.
The last time there was a contested Massachusetts Primary with some impact on the larger outcome was quite literally in 1976 when George Wallace decided to make his last stand against Jimmy Carter's Milk of Moderation in Boston of all places.
Since then, our Primary has become a sort of guilty afterthought, one gets the impression that the lack of press attention it garners is an embarrassment to the Commonwealth's democrats and republicans alike.
The reasons for this are fairly obvious, the State's moderate to liberal politics are anathema are a political schism unto themselves when seen in a national context. More importantly, the Commonwealth has harvested a bumper crop of unsuccessful presidential aspirants these past twenty five years, all of whom can be relied upon to make sure the fix is in when the Primary Rolls around.
For a few minutes in 2008 it looked like the primary might have some impact on the democratic race, Obama did some campaigning, Clinton did some campaigning, Gallup called it for Obama and Hilary ended up clearing the boards.
A surprise outcome however is no great treatment for what amounts to decades of neglect...And soon enough the whole mishaugas was back to being an unloved chore.
Sad really.
The last time there was a contested Massachusetts Primary with some impact on the larger outcome was quite literally in 1976 when George Wallace decided to make his last stand against Jimmy Carter's Milk of Moderation in Boston of all places.
Since then, our Primary has become a sort of guilty afterthought, one gets the impression that the lack of press attention it garners is an embarrassment to the Commonwealth's democrats and republicans alike.
The reasons for this are fairly obvious, the State's moderate to liberal politics are anathema are a political schism unto themselves when seen in a national context. More importantly, the Commonwealth has harvested a bumper crop of unsuccessful presidential aspirants these past twenty five years, all of whom can be relied upon to make sure the fix is in when the Primary Rolls around.
For a few minutes in 2008 it looked like the primary might have some impact on the democratic race, Obama did some campaigning, Clinton did some campaigning, Gallup called it for Obama and Hilary ended up clearing the boards.
A surprise outcome however is no great treatment for what amounts to decades of neglect...And soon enough the whole mishaugas was back to being an unloved chore.
Sad really.
Sunday, March 04, 2012
It has been a bad week for
"Controvores."
Andrew Breitbart died abruptly, and Rush Limbaugh was compelled to apologize after calling a Georgetown Law Student a "slut" on the congressionally licensed public airwaves.
As the Late Doctor Raoul Duke famously observed, "bad craziness".
Of course, there is a distinction here, an important one as well, between the controvore and the workaday pundit.
A controvore is rhetorical arsonist intent on keeping a specific electoral cohort in a state of perpetual fear and ecstatic hatred. Controvores make big bucks by consuming controversy (both real and imagined) and exuding a diresome aura of fear, loathing and a false consciousness of persecution. It is important to note that controvores bear no relation either to journalism or pure entertainment though they often travel under both designations as flags of convenience.
Jacques Ellul opined that functioning democracies cannot generate effective propaganda, when they do, they automatically cease to be democracies.
"Controvores" are the next best thing to propaganda in a functioning democracy, they literally serve a nonexistent entirely internalized autocracy.
Owing to the current degraded & dementia ridden state of conservatism in the USA, controvores generally tend to reactionary and pseudo populist in outlook as the right wing offers them a better more fearful audience and more lucrative opportunities.
There are a some liberals out there who are trying to become controvores without compromising their politics, but are making little progress as far as I can see. They lack the soothing myth of grievance perhaps.
Pundits, on the other hand, coming as they do almost entirely out of journalism, have to traffick in the facts on a regular basis.
They may not like it, or even be good at it, but they cannot fully give themselves over to counterfactual point of view, it would not be "Good Form".
Moreover such a counterfactual frame of mind probably isn't sustainable in the current journalistic stream wherein information is arrives in the form of a barrage.
A pundit therefore is literally frightened of the facts in a way that is completely alien to today's controvore.
A pundit cannot isolate himself from reality the way a controvore can, when he or she does, voila! A Controvore is born!
Andrew Breitbart died abruptly, and Rush Limbaugh was compelled to apologize after calling a Georgetown Law Student a "slut" on the congressionally licensed public airwaves.
As the Late Doctor Raoul Duke famously observed, "bad craziness".
Of course, there is a distinction here, an important one as well, between the controvore and the workaday pundit.
A controvore is rhetorical arsonist intent on keeping a specific electoral cohort in a state of perpetual fear and ecstatic hatred. Controvores make big bucks by consuming controversy (both real and imagined) and exuding a diresome aura of fear, loathing and a false consciousness of persecution. It is important to note that controvores bear no relation either to journalism or pure entertainment though they often travel under both designations as flags of convenience.
Jacques Ellul opined that functioning democracies cannot generate effective propaganda, when they do, they automatically cease to be democracies.
"Controvores" are the next best thing to propaganda in a functioning democracy, they literally serve a nonexistent entirely internalized autocracy.
Owing to the current degraded & dementia ridden state of conservatism in the USA, controvores generally tend to reactionary and pseudo populist in outlook as the right wing offers them a better more fearful audience and more lucrative opportunities.
There are a some liberals out there who are trying to become controvores without compromising their politics, but are making little progress as far as I can see. They lack the soothing myth of grievance perhaps.
Pundits, on the other hand, coming as they do almost entirely out of journalism, have to traffick in the facts on a regular basis.
They may not like it, or even be good at it, but they cannot fully give themselves over to counterfactual point of view, it would not be "Good Form".
Moreover such a counterfactual frame of mind probably isn't sustainable in the current journalistic stream wherein information is arrives in the form of a barrage.
A pundit therefore is literally frightened of the facts in a way that is completely alien to today's controvore.
A pundit cannot isolate himself from reality the way a controvore can, when he or she does, voila! A Controvore is born!
Friday, March 02, 2012
Isn't it odd how
Scott Brown has changed his mind about almost every current issue on the roster, usually on the basis of what was best for his political fortunes and what best served the needs of his sponsors on Wall Street.
"No On Monday, Means Yes on Friday" as Humble Elias has said many many times before...
Yet the one issue where he has been steadfast from beginning to the last, has been in allowing private companies to deny contraceptives for religious reasons to their employees.
In effect Scott just voted to allow Sharia Law into the private health care plans of the USA...Okay maybe that is hyperbole, but what is good for the Bishop is also fine with the Imam.
Suddenly when women needed his vote, Scott became a puritan.
Funny how that works.
Now, the political calculus is that Brown was trying to pull some "Reagan democrats" into his coalition...male Reagan democrats mostly I would think.
The wives girlfriends daughters and mistresses of those Reagan democrats might take a different view as this campaign rolls forward.
***
I have come to the conclusion that a large part of modern conservatism revolves around repealing the hard fought rights of any cohort that has gotten mainstreamed in the past forty years. Doesn't matter who, gays, women, Latinos, Blacks, somehow the GOP has got to make an example of someone, and take something away.
It is less ideology and more psychology at this point.
"No On Monday, Means Yes on Friday" as Humble Elias has said many many times before...
Yet the one issue where he has been steadfast from beginning to the last, has been in allowing private companies to deny contraceptives for religious reasons to their employees.
In effect Scott just voted to allow Sharia Law into the private health care plans of the USA...Okay maybe that is hyperbole, but what is good for the Bishop is also fine with the Imam.
Suddenly when women needed his vote, Scott became a puritan.
Funny how that works.
Now, the political calculus is that Brown was trying to pull some "Reagan democrats" into his coalition...male Reagan democrats mostly I would think.
The wives girlfriends daughters and mistresses of those Reagan democrats might take a different view as this campaign rolls forward.
***
I have come to the conclusion that a large part of modern conservatism revolves around repealing the hard fought rights of any cohort that has gotten mainstreamed in the past forty years. Doesn't matter who, gays, women, Latinos, Blacks, somehow the GOP has got to make an example of someone, and take something away.
It is less ideology and more psychology at this point.
Thursday, March 01, 2012
Waaal...
Ah swan, but it seems Citizen Warren now trails Former State Senator Scott Brown in current polling.
This was to be expected, Brown is now in full campaign mode, he has money nor has any destructive scandal to his name, so believe me the race is gonna seesaw back and forth as the year rolls on.
Elizabeth Warren is the underdog, keep repeating that to yourselves.
Now, Joanie Vennochi seems to think that the current contraception controversy might be driving down Citizen Warren's numbers, for once I won't rule out the possibility. Because at the very least, Joanie isn't trying to wish away the glass ceiling in the Commonwealth's Politics.
I myself think that the problem is more subtle & psychological in nature.
Humble Elias suspects that a lot of male voters in Massachusetts go into the polling booth with the following notion in their heads "I already live in the Most Liberal State in the Union, why should I live up to that reputation by voting a woman in as Governor/Senator?".
So it follows, that if Citizen Warren wants to win she needs to confront the mass psychology of the Glass Ceiling and furnish irrefutable reasons to vote for her and thus dispense with the services of Scott "Beefcake" Brown.
Otherwise Warren cannot win, if she simply ignores the glass ceiling, that tactic didn't work for Swift, Healey, Coakley or O'Brien, and it won't work now.
And in a larger context, this is the candidate, this is the campaign, everyone has their strengths and shortcomings, we are gonna have to win this one with what we have...expect no miracles in the 2012 Massachusetts Senate Race.
Because believe me, if we do not depose Former State Senator this year, we will never be quit of him til his pride swollen head carries him off to the New Hampshire Primary and certain electoral annihilation.
This was to be expected, Brown is now in full campaign mode, he has money nor has any destructive scandal to his name, so believe me the race is gonna seesaw back and forth as the year rolls on.
Elizabeth Warren is the underdog, keep repeating that to yourselves.
Now, Joanie Vennochi seems to think that the current contraception controversy might be driving down Citizen Warren's numbers, for once I won't rule out the possibility. Because at the very least, Joanie isn't trying to wish away the glass ceiling in the Commonwealth's Politics.
I myself think that the problem is more subtle & psychological in nature.
Humble Elias suspects that a lot of male voters in Massachusetts go into the polling booth with the following notion in their heads "I already live in the Most Liberal State in the Union, why should I live up to that reputation by voting a woman in as Governor/Senator?".
So it follows, that if Citizen Warren wants to win she needs to confront the mass psychology of the Glass Ceiling and furnish irrefutable reasons to vote for her and thus dispense with the services of Scott "Beefcake" Brown.
Otherwise Warren cannot win, if she simply ignores the glass ceiling, that tactic didn't work for Swift, Healey, Coakley or O'Brien, and it won't work now.
And in a larger context, this is the candidate, this is the campaign, everyone has their strengths and shortcomings, we are gonna have to win this one with what we have...expect no miracles in the 2012 Massachusetts Senate Race.
Because believe me, if we do not depose Former State Senator this year, we will never be quit of him til his pride swollen head carries him off to the New Hampshire Primary and certain electoral annihilation.
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