Alfred E. Newman from Hell
David Seaton's News Links
There seem to be a lot of Republicans walking around with familiar smirks on their faces today.
This is entirely premature.
I know that Americans are famous for their short memories and even shorter attention spans, but only one year has passed since a great affliction and a daily humiliation was extirpated from our "hearts and minds".
I made this video over three years ago and I am reviving it in case there are any Republicans who think that people are going to soon forget what they have inflicted on the country and mankind. DS
This is entirely premature.
I know that Americans are famous for their short memories and even shorter attention spans, but only one year has passed since a great affliction and a daily humiliation was extirpated from our "hearts and minds".
I made this video over three years ago and I am reviving it in case there are any Republicans who think that people are going to soon forget what they have inflicted on the country and mankind. DS
2 comments:
Thoughts on the off year elections:
1. All politics is local. A rural upstate New York district had Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck support a fellow who didn't live there or know what the local issues were. So it wasn't about Obama, it was about arrogant national pundits trying to tell locals their own business.
2. Big money is necessary but not sufficient. Bloomberg barely won even though he reportedly spent $100,000,000 of his own money to be reelected mayor of New York City. Corzine also spent a lot of his own money, and it wasn't enough.
Out here in California Meg Whitman, former CEO of E-Bay, is running for governor on the platform of cutting taxes for people like herself. Despite fawning media coverage she is going down in flames. It turns out she hadn't bothered to vote or even register to vote locally until recently, giving the impression that she thinks that voting is for the little people. Forbes magazine photographed her next to one of her horses on her country estate.
We Americans will happily vote for celebrities but wealth alone is not enough.
The really big money doesn't care which party gets elected, they will pay off the winner.
3. It was off year, with non-charismatic candidates. Apparently turnout in Virginia was much lower than in 2008, especially among blacks and 20 year olds who would have voted democratic had they bothered to vote. Turnout will be higher in 2012 or even 2010.
4. Low turnout, voting for celebrities - we get the government we deserve.
As forensic economist said, we get the government we deserve. I think Americans are allergic to any heavy lifting on a personal level and vote for others to bring about whatever change is in vogue, and feel that there ends their part in a democracy. Last year it was Obama who was going to change everything, but that hasn't happened quickly enough for the independant voters who put him over the hump, so now they're trying someone else (whoever Obama didn't endorse) with the same expectation that that person will deliver. They vote. They go home. Their contribution is done.
Those "first-timers" who Obama seduced into voting last year can perhaps now be called "only-timers" and stayed home because of the lack of candidates with Obama-like charisma, as forensic economist also points out. Maybe they'll turn out again in 2012, but that probably depends on whether they can afford the gas or bus token to get to the polling place. If unemployment maintains its upward creep, Americans will vote for whomever can come up with the grooviest slogan promising to put order back in this (obligatory reference) great country and clean up Washington.
Republicans smirk because they know that if all Democrats will offer voters is low-fat republicanism, most of the time the voters will choose the full-fat, double cream version of the same product.
I just had the chinese grocer here tell me that at least under Reagan, America had trickle-down prosperity, whereas now Obama was giving us trickle-up poverty. Americans don't so much forget what was inflicted as not even realize who started us down this path to begin with. Ours are self-inflicted wounds and the flag is our bandage. As for the rest of mankind, it is only useful to us as a mirror that reflects our righteousness, our caring and our gritty defense of good vs. evil. What a terrific cartoon that was of the airplane flying into the mirror.
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