This Morning's Dream

That threw me out of bed...

I dreamed that I was taking a nice beach vacation...

With Hillary and Barack!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And they both were trying to sway me to vote for them.

I need my Snarkangel to medicate me.



P.S. Afraid to look at what I posted last Wednesday. Much Jaeger.

UPDATE: Oh, dear! Just looked. Sincerest apologies to all!

The hagiographic hooplah around Obama & Hillary's brilliant ad- I'd almost think about voting for her after viewing it!

One of the Obama videos I posted last night, the one I said gave me lactose intolerance problems, has had embedding disabled. I said of it

Not sure what to make of this video, other than that being lactose intolerant something this cheesy is putting my intestinal health in grave danger, not to mention my sanity... but maybe that's the point, to be as over the top as my slideshow. I see it uses the same silly picture of him with the Superman statue as I did, so...

It was embeddable last night, but now isn't, so if you want to watch it, you have to click here. The same user has posted several other videos which seem more to be VERY hagiographic.
Here's a more blatant one... I wonder how long before it gets yanked.

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I just don't get the "cult of Obama." Aside from Jesus Christ and my wife, the only thing I've come close to having that sort of reverence for or worship of was the 21 year old cheddar I found in Tomah Wisconsin years ago. People is people, for feck's sake.

• We all drop stinky loads after mawing down a bag of our favorite junk food
• We all think of adding a level of hell to Dante's 7 when someone with 20 items in their carts gets in front of us in the 12 items or less isle.
• We've all followed the crowd and enjoyed or participated in something we've later come to rue and regret. (In my case, it was string ties in the 80s, and the Bee Gees in the 70s.)

Would Mother Teresa or Albert Schweitzer or get the same level of adulation, the same exemption from any criticism or critique?! I doubt it! As I found on JibJab, one might as well advocate the clubbing of baby seals or the torture of kittens as critique him.

To paraphrase my favorite booze commercial- a mind is a like a parachute, it only works when when open. This is a presidential primary for pity's sake, not the Immaculate Election!

The brilliant Hillary Clinton Ad

Of course, my reaction to this was the same as every other commentator with a few active brain cells- that it takes after Johnson's [in]famous "Daisy Ad"

Now, I can't claim I remember this commercial- I heard about it on cable TV, but its striking how similar the ads are... and for good reason, the same guy produced them both!

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Heaven knows, I'm no fan of either Clinton, but I have defended Senator Clinton when she was attacked unfairly because she has 2 "x" chromosomes, and I've got to give her credit for laying out the issue so well here, even if it is a reprise of an older spot.

Initially I was proud of America for being open to Obama's candidacy, and was pleased he was appealing to the "higher angels" in us. But two things have soured me on him.

1) The more he speaks, the less he says. If brevity is the soul of wit... the inverse is holding true with him. His campaign is like a pep rally with no game following... a warm up without an act!

2) The fanaticism of his fans, and the way they treat naysayers. I'd already noticed this and been quite off put by it before I started getting feces for it. No one should be worshiped, adored, and exempted from critical scrutiny... much less someone running to be the modern day equivalent of Caesar Augustus!

My theory on why Rev. Gov. Huckabee is still running / The Arkansas Governor <> Machiavelli connection | McCain & Sun Tzu

If you don't know who Machiavelli is...

1. Oh come on! Stop pulling my leg...
1. Ow, it hurts, I mean it!
1. It doesn't need to be any longer!
1. Or at least pull them both... I HATE asymmetry!
   
2. Click here for the Wiki article.
   

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Now, I created that slideshow to make the point that just as President Clinton was and is often mis characterized & underestimated as nothing a bumbling lovable charmer, so too Rev. Gov. Huckabee. Both are masters following after The Master, Machiavelli.

Both former Arkansas Governors are nothing if not intelligent & articulate with "black belts" in the martial art of politics.

Rev. Gov. Huckabee is still in the race for the following reasons:

1. To become leader of the "conservative movement"- a role which is not naturally his, since his record and policies are as inconsistent as Gov. Romney's and unorthodox as Sen. McCain's.
   
2. To define that movement in exclusively social terms... which is to say- to coopt the entire mantle of conservativism for the Radical Religious Right.
3. To make sure that McCain has to pull "right" (as he defines "right")

He may succeed in #1... on #s 2&3... its less certain. Should McCain win the Presidency, then #2 is unlikely to happen, but he'll still stand a good chance of coalescing the "dissenting conservatives" around him.

On #2- I hope McCain doesn't fall for that "rope-a-dope" ploy. Military man that he is, he is doubtless familiar with Sun Tzu's seminal Art of War- it is required reading in military academies through out the world, and well so! I hope he heeds it, especially these points:

Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans, the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces, the next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field, and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.
-Sun Tzu, the Art of War

If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.

He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight. He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces. He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks. He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared. He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign.

In all fighting, the direct method may be used for joining battle, but indirect methods will be needed in order to secure victory. In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack - the direct and the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers. The direct and the indirect lead on to each other in turn. It is like moving in a circle - you never come to an end. Who can exhaust the possibilities of their combination?

And finally and most crucially...

The clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him.


Quotations found at http://www.military-quotes.com/Sun-Tzu.htm, emphasis mine

NOW -W- gets religion?! & Sauced Gander

Ever since President Reagan's exit from office and public life, classic liberals (also known as "Jeffersonian Liberals," or "libertarians") have been the cuckolds of the GOP. We've seen her go whoring after lobbyists, shacking up with big government, taxing and spending with an abandon not seen since Imelda Marcos' last shoe shopping spree.

So now... months before he leaves office, President Bush makes a show of opposing earmarks?! Talk about a death bed conversion! Its not like he did anything to cut spending, simplify the tax code, reduce the size and wastefulness of the federal government when he had a GOP congress, when he could have actually done something about the problems.

Just pathetic.

Next topic... as you may have noticed, I'm no fan of either Clinton (I think the phrase "I'd not vote for him or her to be dog catcher" might have given that away, *grin*) Even so, I find it amusing and ironic that the same people who once cheered President Bill on when he was fighting no holds barred against Republicans have suddenly discovered that... he plays dirty. DUH! What's next... discovering that there is no tooth-fairy?! The birds are coming home to roost, what's been sauce for the goose is now sauce for the gander... and now its a problem, when for the last 15 years it wasn't.

Now here's where I might surprise you.... I don't give a rat's about how BC's shooting his mouth off... doesn't wedge my g-string any further up my crack than it already is. Politics is a dirty, vicious, ugly business... and it always has been.

Yes, I think he's making a fool of himself and making Barack's canonization that much more likely, but I just can't work up any moral indignation over his treating Saint Barack the way he's treated every opponent previously.

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Ps.... if you want to see videos of Tess hallucinating with a migraine, the puppies cleaning our faces, etc., I'll be posting them over on my multiply blog later tonight... I know Snark loves them, but... ya gotta know your crowd. Ya'll are a fun, political, phreaky lot, the folks at Multiply more get off on the personal stuff. (In the same token, I did NOT post this there. I may... there's a couple of deep thinking passionate classic liberals over there, but the rest... are a mix of political agnostics, Huckabee fans, and people outside the US, so...

I'm no Bill Clinton fan, but COME ON! He who has not fallen asleep during a sermon let him cast the first... nodoz

Source: http://www.nypost.com/seven/01212008/news/regionalnews/01212008_bill_clinton/photo01.jpg

Dateline New York... and all over the media. The below is from the NY Post, in an article snarkily called "Bill has a dream" but its been everywhere....

January 21, 2008 -- Bill Clinton showed yesterday why he made it into the book "The Art of Napping." During an appearance at the Convent Avenue Baptist Church in Harlem, the former president was caught nodding off. Clinton was there during a service to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., while his wife was nearby at Abyssinian Baptist Church, where she was endorsed by its minister, Rev. Calvin Butts. Clinton has had napping episodes before. Among others, he nodded off at a Mets game and at Ronald Reagan's funeral.

Look, I'd not vote for him to be dog catcher, but SO WHAT IF HE FELL ASLEEP?!

Are we really such children that when every anybody with whom we disagree or for whom we don't care does ANYTHING we can use to attack and smear them, we do so...?

When I was an acolyte, I used to fix my eyes on a spot across from me and keep my eyelids open to stay awake. When I became a pastor, I used to joke that it was the only way I could stay awake during sermons.

I'd like to say this is beneath us as a nation, but clearly it isn't... and the faces on Rushmore are weeping over it.

Be still my heaving stomach- A memo to Ms. Clinton, Rev. Huckabee, and all other preachers and politicians

I tried very hard to find a video clip of this... the words and setting and blatent mixing of church and state are bad enough, but her phony affected delivery of these lines was just stunning in its audacity!

At a historic African American church in Harlem she said

“Faith without works is dead - But works without faith is just too hard.”

To read more about this, go to this AP story, from which I also linked the picture.

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A bit of historical background for the next phase of this rant. You've heard the Press referred to as the 4th Estate, and might have wondered what the other three were? The Wiki Article on the 4th Estate describes the situation aptly and succintly:

Novelist Jeffrey Archer in his work The Fourth Estate made this observation: "In May 1789, Louis XVI summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the 'Estate General'. The First Estate consisted of three hundred clergy. The Second Estate, three hundred nobles. The Third Estate, six hundred commoners. Some years later, after the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, looking up at the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, said, 'Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all.'"

Therefor, I would put forth this modest proposal... to be adopted unilaterally and universally because I say so, I'm right, and I'm royally sick of politicians preaching and preachers politicking!

Let it be resolved that effective immediately, Monday January 21st at 12:32 AM Greenwich Mean Time in the year 2008 AD and forever henceforth that...

1. The first estate (clergy) shall lie about God
2. The second estate (nobles... extended to government officials and elected officials) shall lie about government
3. The third estate (commoners- ie, us) shall lie about our weight, age, and sexual practices and other matters personal and really no business of anyone else anyway
   
4. The forth estate (the press) shall lie about everything.

OK, can we keep that straight now

people? Sheesh!

Rebublicans, Sucks To Be You

221,000 Hawkeyes voted Democrat, 150,000 voted Retard. I do believe Iowa used to be overwhelmingly Republican.

And Hillary coming in 3rd as a Dem with 64,000 votes had more votes that the Republican 1st place Huckster's 40,000.