Is anyone else kind of vaguely depressed by the spectacle of the Republican nominating contest? We do share the country with these people. And this is the face we put out to the rest of the world. It’s like Uncle Sam wearing clown shoes. We have Jeb Bush feeling compelled to come out his monastery and issue a dressing-down to Rick Perry for dabbling in birtherism. We have Herman Cain making a mockery of the process with his stupid commercials. We’ve got Mitt Romney visiting a Republican call center in Ohio and then refusing to endorse the state ballot issue that they we’re calling about.
I mean, it’s just buffoonish behavior all around.
Doesn’t this concern you?
dunno, i think it has been this way since ’80 when conservatives finally “crossed the rubicon” but YMMV
None of this surprises me after Reagan.
Remember his “killer trees” comment? Or that fascism was the inspiration for the New Deal?
Sadly, if this was a movie script we’d all be laughing at these characters.
Currently I’m more concerned about the buffoonish behavior of the Republicans in Congress than of their presidential candidates. At least the buffoonery on the campaign trail doesn’t have the immediate and premeditated effect of undermining the economic recovery and Americans’ faith in government.
Of course if one of these buffoons gets elected, then I will be concerned. But for the moment, the whole clown show is at least making me more optimistic about Obama’s chances at reelection.
And we have Occupy Columbia’s livestream being citizen journalists in Rick Perry’s press conference inside the South Carolina State House. Wearing “We are the 99%” tee shirts.
Does it depress me? No, it angers me. And it’s beginning to anger some of my halfway Republican friends.
Most people were angered by the debt ceiling debate and by Congress’s preening about jobs and deficits while doing absolutely nothing. And most Democrats I know are kinda hacked off that the national leadership is not even trying to gain Congressional seats in strong Republican areas when there is so much general dissatisfaction. As well as being angered by the continued obstruction of the President’s legislation by Democrats, including North Carolina’s Senator Kay Hagan.
It’s buffoonish behavior on almost all sides. Wisely the President has stayed clear of responding to the political crisis in the country.
But the increased number of mayors using police state tactics to evict Occupy Wall Street encampments might require President Obama to make some behind the scenes efforts to keep the US from becoming like the regimes that he has publicly criticized.
This is off topic but I hope that you view the video and pass it along.
“I am NOT Disappointed in President Obama”
This 6-minute video is a MUST-SEE! This gentleman quietly, decisively, and succinctly sums up why President Barack Obama is the epitome of “Promises Made and Promises Kept” and why some progressives and liberals are misguided in their expectations and criticisms of the POTUS.
http://blackliberalboomer.posterous.com/i-am-not-disappointed-in-president-obama
This is a well-done video. It would make excellent campaign footage.
But the debate has moved on since the debt ceiling compromise.
Folks now are clear that the system of electing politicians is broken, seriously broken.
It doesn’t matter what President Obama’s competences are, he will not do better next term unless Congress changes dramatically.
And that will not happen unless the political culture in which we elect the President can end run the insidious influence of the Wall Street Media, who see the election season as a quadrennial bonanza–and who are not unhappy at all with the Citizens United decision. It will dramatically fatten their bottom line.
In 2008, we did not know how seriously rigged the system was. Now we do. We have to fix that before re-electing the President has any practical meaning. Indeed, fixing that might well be necessary to re-elect the President.
It is sad that so many well-meaning Democratic politicians have been trapped in a system that denies them the opportunity to do what they went into politics to do.
It is sad and dangerous that the opposition to the President no longer is loyal to either the Constitution or the interests of the 99% of American people who voted for them (and most likely will vote for them again).
You are very insightful, as always. I can only disagree with the “well-meaning Democratic politicians” part. Growing up in Richard J. Daley’s Cook County and considering people like Mel Reynolds, John Stroger, Todd Stroger, et cetera, et very cetera, I only see the seamy side. No wonder that I actually like Rod Blagojevich, who was just as grasping and venal, but actually did things for ordinary people. Not out of love, I know. Probably out of spite to someone who wouldn’t bribe him, but for whatever reason, he wasn’t just a Republican seen in a mirror.
I lived in Chicago long enough to know it’s easy to get cynical about all politicians at all times just because of the way the Chicago machine functions.
For reference, I lived there at the time that the checks for license plates had to be made to “Paul Powell, Secretary of State”. What could go wrong with that–especially if someone was in a hurry and forgot the “Secretary of State” part. I saw a West Side community bargain with votes (they were pretty together politically) in order to get city investment to bring jobs to the community. The jobs? A CPD district headquarters. Yep, it’s easy to get cynical if your only data point is Chicago and Illinois politicians.
Got burned by Paul Powell that way myself. A guy in my local Air Force Association chapter was a private charter pilot who flew him and Marge Everett(?), the race track queen, around Illinois. Their unguarded conversation was pretty disgusting.
My other political reference point is Republican Virginia. Once, we elected a Democratic Congressman and he was pretty good, but he was only a one-termer. His replacement was one of those awful “Christian Conservatives”.
BTW, I no longer belong to AFA. Somewhere along the way from the ’70s it became nothing but a shrill hard line conservative mouthpiece for the aerospace industry. You should have seen them go crazy about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Not the repeal, Clinton’s original. They positively foamed at the mouth. Talking to AF vets now who were in then, they say that it was no big deal, everyone knew some guys were gay and so what? As long as they did their jobs, who cares?
Cain is making a mockery of the process? That’s kinda like trying to do a parody of the three stooges. Or is it more like laughing at a horse being beaten bloody? I dunno — one of those glass-half-full/empty things, I guess.
Seriously, though: we’re supposed to get melancholy because Cain is taking lightly the vast dignity of the American electoral process? If this is all about telling it like it is, maybe I’ll think about voting for him after all. I mean, at least he’s more entertaining than Reagan and smarter than Bushes.
All I have to say is
WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE????? That boo a gay service member, who laugh at someone dying because they have no healthcare, that make fun of a person with Parkinsons disease, who disrespect the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, who want to strip seniors, kids, the poor of every single lifeline, who think if a woman is raped she should be forced to carry the rapist’s baby.
I mean WHERE THE HELL AND WHO THE HELL raised these racist, selfish, uneducated STUPID people?
This not only concerns me, it scares the you know what out of me that one of these clowns could actually GET ELECTED to run our country. That people would vote for them. If we lose the WH AND all of Congress I am seriously looking into going to Europe or Canada to live out my last 20 or so years. I don’t believe I could live under these whack job republicans.
Yeah, it seems pretty damn frightening to me too. This is the supposed to be their best? Jeebus!
They need to be at a Sociopaths Anonymous meeting, not a political gathering.
Italy has an under-indictment pederast as a prime minister. The President of South Korea killed himself over a corruption scandal.
Do you particularly care? Do you spend your time fretting about the states of those countries? Unless you’re a diehard American exceptionalist, there’s probably a lesson there…
The odd variety of GOP candidates to me is a symptom of a party trying to please the extreme, fantasy based elements of the Tea Party while at the same time being slightly cognizant that sooner or later they need to sound at least slightly sane in the corporate media and appeal to more voters nationally. What else would I expect it to be?
I’m rather enjoying it as long as the corporate media is willing to do some fact checking with various ridiculous “tax plans” and “economic plans”.
The time I got anywhere close to depressed was when we as a nation thought it was such a great idea to invade Iraq and almost half the so called opposition party went along with it. That was my “This is our country. These are my people.” moment.
I’m not depressed. We need to stay alert and sharp as the dirty tricks are coming.