● Caucusing: Procedures. The caucus process is an awful process and needs to be replaced. The process goes like this. First, you had to register in advance. Several people were turned away for not being registered. The 36 who remained crammed into a room. The floor was thrown open for speeches and five people demonstrated their ignorance. A vote was held, confirming their ignorance. Then delegates were elected. Those delegates will now go to a county convention, where they hope to be elected to go the state convention. Seriously. Could you design a less efficient and representative system? Sure, by adding a meaningless primary, which Colorado will also have for no reason whatsoever.
● Caucus: Voters. If you ever want to lose your faith in democracy, go to one of these shindigs. The level of idiocy was intense. Five people spoke, all for Santorum. The first woman said, “I’ve never been to a caucus before and I don’t know much about the candidates, but Mr. Santorum seems very moral to me.” The next idiot said, “we tried voting for economics in the past and look where that go us. It’s time we voted for a guy who’s moral and Mr. Santorum, he’s moral. And he’s an economic conservative. He’s got a history of being the only economic conservative.” Idiot number three said, “I just wanted to say a word about Mr. Santorum. He’s pro-life. He opposed partial birth abortion when nobody else would. We need to stop abortion in America and Mr. Santorum is the only one who will do that.” Idiot number four said, “Obama is the most immoral leader we ever had. We need a man who is moral and that’s Mr. Santorum.” Finally, idiot number five said, “Abortion is the biggest issue this country faces and Mr. Santorum is the only one who will stop abortion.”
Then a vote was held: Pastor Rick 25, Romney 10, Paul 1, Newt 0.
● Caucusing: Results. This is the part where you think I’m going to lose my mind. I’ll bet you expect me to rail against the idiots who don’t realize (or care) that Santorum is a socialist, who think tilting at the abortion windmill is more important than political freedom and jobs in this country, who don’t get that Rick can’t be elected because he’s toxic, and who don’t realize that he will never deliver a ban on abortion even if he gets elected. Well, forget about it. I’m over it. All I’ll say is congratulations President Obama on your re-election. You have chosen your opponents wisely.
● The Chrysler Ad: Until yesterday, I saw no reason to comment on the Clint Eastwood Super Bowl ad. There are already 5.2 million screeds written about it and I saw no reason to add another. But as the number of articles just keep piling up, I realized there is something worth saying: Stop!
For those who don’t know, this ad showed Clint Eastwood pimping the turnaround of Chrysler and Detroit. The ad isn’t overtly political, but it sure feels that way and it was enough to get conservative spidey-senses tingling. Indeed, the ad seems to imply that the auto bailout, something Obama considers his number one selling point, has saved Detroit, Chrysler and America, and now everything is great again. In many ways, this felt like the first Obama re-election commercial. Obama even added to this sense by praising the ad and basically thanking Chrysler for the plug.
But then things went wrong. Conservatives screamed foul. This immediately brought out Clint Eastwood to make sure that people knew he was not associated with Obama nor was he endorsing Obama. Then people started mentioning: (1) how the taxpayers lost almost three billion dollars in the Chrysler part of the bailout, (2) how Chrysler is owned by Fiat, an Italian company and not Americans, and makes their cars in Canada and Mexico, not Detroit, and (3) how Detroit is a hopeless basketcase akin to what is shown in Robocop. Suddenly, the whole “Obama is great” gloss began to look like a bitter joke.
Now there’s word that this pro-Detroit ad was actually filmed in New Orleans! How ridiculous is that? Not only did they need to pick another city to highlight Detroit, but this is the second time Fiat has made this mistake in the past few months (Fiat = Chrysler). Indeed, you may recall Fiat being embarrassed when it was revealed that their Jennifer Lopez ads where Lopez talks about New York being her home while seeming to drive through New York were actually shot in L.A. How in the world could the same company make this same huge mistake twice? Does that make you trust their cars?
In the end, this became an incredible embarrassment for Fiat/Chrysler, Detroit and Obama.
BUT conservatives won’t stop whining about it. Indeed, as article after article continues to be written about this, often wrongly accusing Clint Eastwood of selling out, conservatives are coming across like petty, obsessed children.... little Santorums. When you pile on, there comes a point where people feel the attacks have become ridiculous and the sympathies shift. We have reached that point. Take your victory and move on before you snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.... like always.
No comments:
Post a Comment