Grim News

Now that everyone has had a couple of days to calm down from Tuesday, what exactly does it mean that Barack Obama has been elected our 44th president?  As usual, Matt and Trey have hilariously shown us a collective mirror.  Seems like half of us think that it’s going to be kittens and rainbows for at least 4 years, and the other half are preparing their survival bunkers for the end of the world as we know it.

There are a fair number of commentators out there who think Obama is nothing more than a reaction to 8 years of George W. Bush.  What I want to know is… How can I get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to make such obvious observations?  Certainly 8 years of Bush has left the country in the mood for something, ANYTHING, different, but it took a candidate like Barack Obama to step up and articulate his message in a way that resonates with the voting public.  Past candidates like John Kerry, Michael Dukakis, or even Hillary Clinton, could not have inspired the voters the way Obama has.

Now it falls on Obama to lead.  Inspiration is only part of the equation, now he has to execute.  Fortunately, if we can extrapolate from how his campaign was run, he appears to be an effective organizer.  Set up your organization and then let your people do what you hired them to do.  That is why close attention will be paid to his initial appointments.  There have been no surprises in his staff choices, most of whom are Democratic party veterans with ties to Chicago. (In other words, people he knows well and can work with.)  These positions are not the time or place for him to “reach across the aisle” as he needs people who can march in lock step with what he has in mind and who are familiar with Obama’s leadership style.

The cabinet appointments, however, will be far more interesting.  A cynic might come up with the idea that he would tap a Republican Senator or two (especially one who’s state has a Democratic governor) for a cabinet post.  This would be an obvious Machiavellian move to tilt power in the Senate further towards the Democratic party, but the Republicans are in the unenviable position of looking bad (and partisan) if they refuse.  Here is a list of Senators who fall into that category, in case you were wondering.

• John Kyl – Arizona
• Wayne Allard – Colroado
• Chuck Grassley – Iowa
• Sam Brownback – Kansas
• Pat Roberts – Kansas
• Jim Bunning – Kentucky
• Mitch McConnell – Kentucky
• Olympia Snowe – Maine
• Susan Collins – Maine
• Judd Gregg – New Hampshire
• Richard Burr – North Carolina
• George Voinovich – Ohio
• Jim Inhofe – Oklahoma
• Tom Coburn – Oklahoma
• Gordon Smith – Oregon
• Arlen Specter – Pennsylvania
• Lamar Alexander – Tennessee
• Bob Corker – Tennessee
• Mike Enzi – Wyoming
• John Barrasso – Wyoming

Last, and most certainly not least…

• John McCain – Arizona

Obviously, the Obama transition team is more familiar with these Senators than I am, but if I had to guess, some senators would be elimated from consideration because they are too partisanly Republican to work well with an Obama administration (Arlen Specter comes to mind immediately).  Others would be eliminated because they have shown a willingness to buck the Republican party line on occasion, particularly with respect to fillibuster votes. (Olympia Snowe, for example)

Possible targets, if I were making the list, would be Lamar Alexander (former Secretary of Education under Bush 41) or Sam Brownback (who has expressed Presidential ambitions, and has self-imposed a term limit on himself so that he will not seek re-election to the Senate in 2010).

This would not be a strategy that you could apply more than once within the Senate or House, but it would satisfy Republicans that the Obama administration is, in fact, willing to reach across the aisle, while simultaneously benefitting the Democrats by tilting the advantage by a vote or two back towards themselves.  In a Senate that appears to be split (results aren’t in for a few races, Georgia has a run-off election scheduled for December 2nd.)  58-40 with two “Independents”, that could be an extremely important vote.

I hate telephone advertising.  While I realize that this is a controversial choice, I am prepared to defend my position against the hordes of angry defenders of the right to interrupt my dinner while peddling your bullshit product/service/charity/political candidate.

That said, a couple of things have happened recently that have made me rethink my opinion.

For starters, about 40 call center employees in Indiana walked off the job rather than read a prepared script bashing Barack Obama for things like:

• Electing Barack Obama will put your children in danger
• Barack Obama is soft on crime
• Coddling criminals and putting them on the streets early

Willie Horton, there is a call for you on the white (fear) courtesy phone!

Of course, the only reason they were asked to read this script was because it illegal to robo-call in the state of Indiana.  If you’d like to hear the ad as it ran in other states, here you go.

If you don’t feel like listening…

Hello, I’m calling for John McCain and the RNC, because Democrats are dangerously weak on crime. Barack Obama has voted against tougher penalties for street gangs, drug-related crimes, and protecting children from danger. Barack Obama and his liberal allies have a disturbing history of coddling criminals. so we can’t trust their judgment to keep our families safe. This call was paid for by the Republican National Committee and McCain-Palin 2008 at 866 558-5591. Thank you, bye

Hey Senator McCain, if minimum wage phone monkeys can see through your bullshit, how well do you think this is going to play with the rest of the country?  Maybe you could outsource the calls to India since they neither know, nor care, about you or the American public.

Think about this for a minute, telemarketing is one of the slimiest professions known to man, even prostitution is more honest about what it is than a telemarketer who calls during dinner asking to speak to Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so about something “REALLY important”.  If these guys are saying “No thanks, I have standards.” to your message, then maybe you should re-think the message.

Maybe if you were more like this guy, you could have Sarah Palin do something useful for your campaign.

Dear Rush,

Greetings from a former Dittohead.  Back in the early 90’s, I was an avid listener to your radio show.  I thoroughly enjoyed your sense of humor and your willingness to lampoon and annoy politicians and public figures that took themselves and their causes a little too seriously.  I embraced your brand of conservatism that held the idea that Americans could look out for themselves without the help of Big Government.  I was 21 years old and in college.  I didn’t need Government to help me get anywhere and I didn’t see how anyone else did.

Then I grew up.

When I was in college, I believed that the decisions and agreements that individuals made were the result of negotiations between two equal parties.  I believed that people made decisions based on rational self interest.  I believed that getting a job was just a matter of performing work for an employer to the best of my ability in exchange for a salary.  I believed that it was in the company’s best interest to look out their employees because the employees looked out for the company’s best interests.  I believed that buying a house or a car was simply a matter of determining how much you could reasonably afford, then negotiating in good faith with the seller  to buy the house or car that you wanted.  I believed that people were basically honest and fair, and that only a few bad apples were the kind of “bad guys” who made the evening news.

Then I grew up.

I lost a job that I had been in for years because someone else, who had no idea what I did, told the man in charge that he could save money by firing me. (“All he does is… I can do that!“) This very same person was on the phone a week later asking me how to do the very things that were my job responsibility.  I had a house payment and credit cards to pay off, and unemployment insurance (there’s that Government thing again) was the difference between me staying in my house and having to foreclose or even declare bankruptcy.  Government didn’t fix anything for me, but it sure as hell helped.  My employer certainly wasn’t looking out for me.

I eventually picked myself up from that fiasco and became gainfully employed again.  It was time for me to purchase a new car.  I was smart enough to know that car salesmen aren’t the most trustworthy characters, but I had no idea…  We had agreed on a financing package. The interest rate and terms were reasonable and we shook hands.  When I double-checked the paperwork, the terms in the contract were completely different than what we had agreed on.  If I had trusted the handshake deal, I would have been stuck paying an extra year’s worth of payments on a car, paying 5000-6000 dollars more than the car was worth.  I would have had nobody to blame but myself, but it galled me that the person whose hand I had just shaken in agreement would try to rip me off so blatantly.   These are the people who am I supposed to trust without needing the recourse of an effective government?

You see? When I was a dittohead, I didn’t understand what Government did well.  I knew they funded roads and the military, and I knew that everything they touched turned into a monstrous bureaucracy.  What good is Government when it comes to issues like health care, or employment law, or the environment?

Then I learned that rather than being “basically honest and fair”, most people are opportunistic jackals who will steal you blind then sell you a shopping cart to carry around the remainder of your worldly possessions.  Doctors don’t prescribe drugs that are best for you, they push what the drug companies pay them to sell.  Bankers don’t care that you’re out of a home.  They just want to earn 400,000 dollars on a 30 year, 150,000 dollar loan.  Employers don’t care that you have a wife and daughter that you are working to take care of, they just see you as a line on their payroll budget.  If times get tough, they’ll cut (you) and run, taking the remainder of the company’s assets in the form of a golden parachute and leave you twisting in the wind.

Is Government any better?  Not really.  Government bureaucracy is a nightmare of byzantine rules that can result in paying 600 dollars for a toilet seat.  But do you know what the biggest difference between government and the private sector is?  If government does a bad job, I can vote the bastards out every few years.  I can punt them to the street and give the other guy a chance to make things better.  If I get screwed by the corporate conglomerate who tries to weasel their way out of a severance package, or who outsources my job to India in order to make his stock options worth a few more dollars I have no recourse.  I have no leverage.  I have no power.

With power comes responsibility.  I am responsible for learning about the candidates and the issues that are important to them.  I’ve said elsewhere that the only deciding factor for a voter in an election is the answer to the question “Are you better off now than you were…?” and that’s true to an extent.  No candidate agrees with every voter on every issue.  In a two party system, you have a choice to keep going in the same direction or change direction.

Which brings us back to you, Rush.  I can understand why you would not support Barack Obama on one level.  He’s not conservative in any sense of the term.  He is going to expand the power and scope of government, and I understand why that isn’t always a good thing.  On the other hand, how in the world can you support John McCain?  The Bush administration has been one of the worst examples of Big Government run amok in history.  McCain has toed the party line 90% of the time and represents a logical continuation of the last 8 years.  Is this the “get government out of our way” type of government you were looking for when I was young?

I might understand if it were a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils, but your demonization of Obama’s supporters is out of line.  This weekend, I watched a respected former member of the current administration, General Colin Powell, detail his reasons for supporting Barack Obama.  I watched him articulately state the reasons that Obama was a better choice than John McCain.

Then I watched you say “Powell is only supporting Obama because he’s black.”

Then I went back in time a little bit and remembered this bit from your brief stint on ESPN.

Then I went back and found some clips like this one…

Seriously?  Really?

Rush, you have become a caricature of the very worst traits of the Conservative movement.  Instead of acting as a leader for your audience and elevating the debate, you shamelessly pander to the most ignorant and uninformed among us.  You march in front of a mob claiming to lead a great movement, but you spend your time looking over your shoulder to make sure that the crowd is still behind you.  You are the most feckless, callow, and weak talk show host in a crowd of cowards.  The only reason this upsets me at all is that I remember a time when I thought otherwise.

Then I grew up.

This should come as no surprise because there is one former Bush cabinet secretary who still has his personal integrity intact.  There is one former Bush cabinet secretary who saw what was going on 4 years ago and said “No, I will not be a part of this.”  I’m talking, of course, about General Colin Powell.

In case you need a refresher on the circumstances behind Powell’s departure as Secretary of State, the Bush administration forced Powell out because he was frequently at odds with cabinet members such as Donald Rumsfeld.  Powell never went public or spoke negatively about his time in the administration and has consistently taken the high road in all discussions on the matter.  As a result, he has maintained favorable opinion with most of the American public, and his endorsement of Obama is a severe blow to the McCain campaign.

Predictably, McCain has moved to counter the blow by mentioning that every other living Republican former Secretary of State has endorsed Senator McCain.  To paraphrase Chris Farley… La-deee-Fricking-dah.  Republicans endorsing one of their own is no surprise, and frankly, not much of an endorsement.  Is there anyone out there who thinks “Well, Nixon’s Secretary of State endorses McCain.  That’s good enough for me!”

Having a former member of the current administration endorse the candidate from the other party, on the other hand, speaks volumes about the ineptitude of Bush and, by extension, a presumptive McCain administration.

Sure, you might see the Al Jazeera logo at the bottom of this screen, but those are Americans that are making us look bad, not the announcer who just happens to be speaking the truth.

Let’s address these comments one by one…  They are all ludicrous to the point of hilarity, but for the sake of argument, I’m going to tackle them anyway.  I need the laugh this morning.

“I’m afraid that if he wins, the black will take over”

Yeah, because he’ll pass that “Kill Whitey” law that the black community has been clamoring for all these years.  Pay no attention to Congress or the Supreme Court or the fact that the President can’t pass any laws on his own.  Whitey is gonna PAY when Obama is in the White (racist) House.

“He’s not a Christian! This is a Christian Nation!”

Oh, so then the Reverend Jeremiah Wright scandal was completely made up!  How could Obama have anything to do with Reverend Wright if he isn’t a Christian in the first place!  It still amazes me that a constituency that can recite the Second Amendment so passionately and eloquently is completely ignorant of the First Amendment.  You remember that one, right?  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”?  You can find it just before you get to the part about “Freedom of Speech” which is another clause that the Republican Party likes to ignore.

“When you’ve got a nigger running for president, you need a first stringer.  He’s definitely a second stringer”

Maybe if Obama broke into a chorus of “Mammy”, he could move into the starting lineup, eh?  What’s the matter?  Is Obama not “uppity” enough for you, Mr John Deere hat?

Fuck.  We’re 30 seconds into a 2 minute video.  It gets worse.

“He seems like a…wolf in sheep’s clothing.  Now Palin… She’s filled with the holy spirit.”

She’s filled with something alright.  Seriously, if Christians are this stupid, how did that religion survive for 2000 years?  I know this is a fundamentalist minority in Christianity, but let’s compare a list of atrocities between Christianity and Islam some time.  It’s easy to blame “Islam” for the world’s ills, but don’t forget that our side has a few extremists too.

“He’s related to a known terrorist”

Who?  Did Bill Ayers adopt him or something?

“He is friends with a terrorist of this country”

This would be an inconvenient time to bring up the connections between the Bush family and the Bin Ladens, eh?  The Bill Ayers story has been beaten into the ground already.  The fact that this “connection” is gaining traction with members of the Republican base says more about the intelligence of the average republican voter than it does about Senator Obama’s character.

“Just the whole… Muslim thing and everything”

Sorry lady, you can put it in vague language all you like, but you’re still a bigot.  A bigot that is too stupid to understand that Obama is not a Muslim.  You’re part of the problem.

“Obama and his wife… I’m concerned that they could be anti-white”

Project much?

“I don’t like the fact that he thinks us white people are trash.”

Not all white people, lady.  Just you.  In this case, he happens to be right.

The commentator in this news video introduces the video, then does not speak again until 1:20 of the 2:08 video.  The pictures tell the story.  The commentator introduces a pro-Obama protester, who happens to be white and is called “Baby Killer”, “Nigger”, and “Muslim” by the Republicans in attendance.  He plainly states that he is afraid that one of these whack-jobs is going to try to kill Obama, and his fears aren’t that unreasonable.

“The divisive nature of this campaign has brought out into the open what is usually discussed behind closed doors in America.  It’s a reminder that hate and fear are still powerful forces in American deciding(sic).”

The one good thing about all of this is that it is bringing racists and racism out into the open again.  Let the world know where you stand.  Are you a racist, bigoted moron?  Or not?  Why is the Republican party such a stronghold of white racism? Why do racist minorities flock to the Democratic party?  Let’s not pretend that only white people are idiots like this.  What is it that is keeping racism alive, and how do we kill it?