A Bridge To You Know Where

On damage mode ever since the George Washington Bridge scandal derailed his 2016 campaign, Chris Christie must prove that he's not totally out of the game.

Chris Christie's 2016 bid now a bridge to nowhere. Time for some traffic problems at the GOP.
twitter.com/stephanemot/status/422171645852143616 (20140112).

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Can the New Jersey Governor finesse his way out of this mess? The concept drawing to mind the image of the hippo dance in Fantasia, it could at least be fun watching his efforts in a tutu and ballerina shoes:

'Chris Christie finessing his way away from the George Washington Bridge scandal in front of fellow GOP hopefuls ('White House Fantasy', Walt Dismay Pictures)

Robert Gates didn't wait for the crash to submit his own resume, attn potential candidates looking for a running mate able to work for BOTH George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In his memoir, "Duty", the former Secretary of Defense even added some Veep Debate credentials for 2016 by slamming Joe Biden's inconsistent foreign policy record. As if serving Dubya and Obama were consistent... His successor Chuck Hagel looks weaker, but he stands his ground.

Meanwhile, the GOP continues to postpone its unavoidable reform*, and to make do with tea partiers, theocons and other anticons.

The NutHouse just picked David Schweikert for the Environment subcommittee of the Science Committee. Since the man signed the "No Climate Tax Pledge", no climate control law shall pass under his watch. Schweikert has a pristine oil-lobby-friendly voting record: against greenhouse gas regulation, in favor of more drilling, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge...

With snafued enemies like these, Hillary Clinton can sleep without a worry until the Primaries.

Unless, of course, the 800-pound gorilla manages to rock the dance floor.

blogules 2014
Since 2003, nonsensical posts about noncritical issues in nonenglish (get your blogules transfusion in French)
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* see "Grand Old Parting - enter the anticons"

Between balance and Ryan, Romney made his choice

Ever since Bush-Cheney-Rove destroyed the GOP from the inside, the party has lost its compass. And I've said it again, again, and again: if you're Republican, if you love your country, and if you like your party, fix the GOP before causing more damage to both*.

Until that happens, you're doomed, and bound to witness comical suicidal dashes every four years: a somewhat moderatish loser emerges from zooesques Primaries, but to achieve that he has to do things that negate his own self, and ultimately to pick a lunatic that suits the radical flavor of the month.

Four years ago, when theocons were setting the agenda, John McCain had to pay a visit to the infamous Discovery Institute and to select an ayatollah as a running mate to receive the official blessing from his old nemeses Dubya and Rove.

This time, with Tea Partiers the leading cult, Mitt Romney had to euthanize Romneycare, and to put a fiscal taliban on his ticket.

Like Palin, Ryan embodies the negation of America as a republic and as a democracy. Both politicians have a vision of politics that negates the "polis" itself, and ineluctably lead to the destruction of America as an ideal of nation.

Unless the whole country has become crazy, this sick Mitt Romney - Paul Ryan joke simply cannot go all the way to the White House.

Just like I said in 2004, just like I repeated in 2008, this GOP is bound to lose: either the elections, or its very soul.

Wake up.

blogules 2012
Since 2003, nonsensical posts about noncritical issues in nonenglish (get your blogules transfusion in French)
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* "Grand Old Parting: fix your party before causing more damage to your country"

US debt : Fools House

The debt-ceiling deadblock can be easily summed up this way : while Barack Obama is trying to prevent the economy from collapsing, John Boehner is trying to prevent the Republican party from imploding.

Of course, as we well know (see "GOP: time to split"), the said implosion started with the 2004 elections, but US voters are just beginning to understand the GOP dilemma : this party cannot at the same time win the 2012 elections and save its soul.

The only way of saving face without caving in would be to submit for vote an absurd proposal bound to crash, and to blame Democrats for the failure.

Well US voters proved that they could be fooled once (giving Newt Gingrich the right to torpedo the budget during the mid 90s), and even twice (giving GWB the right to nuke America's value and economy for four more years during the mid 2000s).

At least twice.

The other day I watched Tim Pawlenty trying to sell, on CNN's "State Of The Union", the idea that they'd been fooled one more time by Obama because the deficit tripled under his first term.

But Candy Crowley was not fooled. And she kindly reminded Pawlenty of the 2008 situation, when only he and the John McCain he campaigned for believed the US economy to be still "fundamentally sound".

Unlike Tim Pawlenty, John Boehner is not a fool.

Just a liar.

blogules 2011

GOP better than TEPCO ?

A complete risk management failure, highly radioactive outputs, but ways quicker for shutdown : the Republican Party eventually outscored Fukushima Daiichi operators. To secure their victory, John Boehner's team already reached 9.1 on Getricher's scale.

Nevertheless, TEPCO execs proved beyond the shadow of a doubt their ability to do business the way the GOP sees it :
- privileging short term profits over security ? check.
- perverting notation systems and forging documents if needed ? check.
- dodging regulations and spreading corruption around ? check.
- undermining the country's economy, ruining the company, and in the end getting a public bailout ? almost done.

Maybe I should update my old rant about the ineluctable implosion of the Grand Old ParTea : instead of "GOP : Time to Split", a final "GOP, Time to Meltdown".

blogules 2011

Reaganomania, Reaganomics, Reaganomy, Reaganaming, Reagan Legacies, and Mount Palin

Ronald Wilson Reagan turned 100 and the GOP barnum celebrated as ridiculously as expected.

Ever the media darling, Sarah Palin took the stage, embarrassed herself, and even received a few comments from Ronald Reagan afterwards. That would be Ron Reagan, Ronald Prescott Reagan, son of RWR and Nancy Reagan... a young lad closer to the liberals, just like his own dad in his own younger years. So what did RPR say ? "Sarah Palin is a soap opera, basically. She's doing mostly what she does to make money and keep her name in the news". Touche.

Otherwise, the disunited GOP exposed two Reagan Legacy entities : a "Reagan Legacy Foundation" focused on Ronald Reagan the man, and a "Reagan Legacy Project" focused on Ronald Reagan the post-Ronald-Reagan myth. The RLF is headed by Michael Reagan (another son of RWR, but before Nancy), the RRLP by ever the caricatural Grover Norquist, the man behind "Americans for Tax Reform" and the heckuva storyteller who wants to sum up The Great Man by his hatred of government.

Mr Norquist wants every county from every state to name something substantial after RWR. In other words, dear taxpayers, this ultimate libertarian wants to make as many big bangs as possible with your bucks. The mother of all his projects is to rename a Nevada mountain "Mount Reagan". Note that New Hampshire did that first, but NH is not GOP-macho-cowboy enough for the picture.

Next thing you know, Grover will demand a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize for Reagan. Probably for his great peace efforts in Central America.

OK. He'd rather point out his greatest achievement : ending the Soviet era. Nevermind the fact that Gorby did that : Ron's biggest legacy was to help reformers gain some openings in the Soviet Union. The TV cowboy outlived so many old farts, that they eventually decided to nominate Michail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the actual reformer in non-revisionist history books.

In 2064, some Tea Party survivor may lobby in favor of a Mount Palin, named after the early XXIst Century celeb who once ran for Veep.

I suggest Wasilla Little League's baseball mound.

blogules 2011

"Restoring Honor" ? Maybe, but not the Glenn Beck way

blogules 2010

Mid-Term Elections : Sarah Palin to run in West Dakota

My dear fellow Amerikans,

Howdy lads and gals ?

As you know, my second book, "Amerika by Heart: reflections on family, faith, and flags", will be published after the mid-term elections, around November 23. Depending on the result, it will either be about my role in the victory, or a "toldya so" condemnation of the GOP's doomed campaign of 2010.

After working on two books in one, my head is swimming with words, but thank God I kept my eyes on the ball... which, by the way, was much easier to find than Obama's cojones (wink - wink) !

As you also know*, I will run in 2012. I got all the credentials as a top FOX News barker. And if the Reps dare not nominate me, I'll merge the Tea Party and my fundamentalist base into a "Libertarian, Gonads, Bible, Tea Party". Will that "LGBT Party" be the pride of our glorious nation ? You betcha !

For 2010, I needed to legitimitize my involvation in the electoric process. I badly hadda run for a seat, and not only because I had a mean chili con carne for lunch. I long hesitated between West Dakota and North Virginia, and settled for the former, 'cause it has a border with Saskatchewanistan : this winter, with Todd, we're gonna Skidoo hunt Bin Laden and his fellow thugs, smoke'im out, gut'im out, hang'im high, you nam'it.

But before that, during this whole year, I'll keep reminding US voters why they need to vote Republican this November : to fight against Obama's unfair policies that granted medical care to whiners and deprived Wall Street execs from well deserved impunities, to drill deeper into the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska (and while we're at it drill even deeper into our prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Gitmo - wink - wink), to restore Amerikan values (starting with waterboarding) and the positive image of Amerika overseas, plus, of course, to go back to our sound economy of 2008.

Yours Truly,

Sarah Louise Palin


blogules 2010

* "GOP - From Morale Building to Moral Damage Control Mode"

GOP meets Poujadism

When Karl Rove says the Tea Party should keep distances from the GOP*, what he actually means is that the GOP should stay away from this political dead end.

But if the Architect knows a few things about winning and losing elections, I don't think he is familiar with French Poujadism, the movement which inevitably comes up to my troubled French mind each time I hear about this laughingstock of a Tea Party.

During the early 1950s, Shop owner Pierre Poujade defied the French tax system and founded a party that surfed on a collapsed political system to claim 400,000 members and more than 50 seats in the National Assembly... where the absence of program of the movement became an embarassment for everyone. Charles de Gaulle's comeback put an end to the doomed IVth Republic, and Poujade's Union de Defense des Commercants et des Artisans left for ever the political centerstage.

Pathetic indeed. But one can worry a bit more about what could happen in a country where a certain Joseph Stack III just crashed his plane on an I.R.S. building in Austin, TX**... Furthermore, among UDCA's law"makers" was Jean-Marie Le Pen, who later founded the extreme right party Front National... I wouldn't be surprised to find this kind of "great democrats" within the Tea Party's dream team.

Hardcore taxophobes are not comfortable with the very concept of a state, and such platforms never bloom in healthy democracies because they are, fundamentally, anti-democracy.

Populism and tax breaks sell well in the short term, but only simple minds stick to it whatever happens. For instance : the same voters who followed G. W. Bush on that path are now mad at Obama because he doesn't know how to reduce Dubya's abyssal deficits with more tax reductions.

Unlike Poujadism, the Tea Party is purely grassroot and lacks a leader. Ron Paul might fit the job, but Sarah Palin proposed to take the helm at the inaugural National Convention in Nashville, TN, reading from her Palm Pilot (actually a low tech model counterfeited by John McCain). Sarah Tea Party Palin... what a match.

We already saw how Palin represented the no-future of the GOP ("Sarah Palin and the Segolene Royal Syndrome - The GOP on the same path as the French Socialist Party"). So a Tea Party Spin Off with Mrs Theocon on board would definitely leave some space for Republicans who actually respect the republic (see "GOP : time to split").

Anyway, instead of following the ones who yell and destroy, GOP leaders would better sit down and think. Even if it means losing the upcoming elections - actually, THAT could come as a blessing : they decently cannot postpone their own reforms any longer.

But Democrats shouldn't rejoice too soon : if the popular success of the Tea Party unmistakably corroborates the ideological collapse of the GOP, it also is a gorilla-sized canary in their own coalmine. And they must prevent the most liberal aisles to stretch beyond the limits of the republic. Obama took the blame and seems to be correcting communication to restore some of the truth : OK, I didn't deliver the goods, but I had a few bads to take care of first.

blogules 2010

* "Where the Tea Parties Should Go From Here" (WSJ 20100219)
** At least, a political crash of the GOP wouldn't cause much damage.