2012: Obama vs. Who?

So it occurs to me that the 2012 general election is gonna be a doozy, even compared to 2008, which was pretty great.

Obama's '08 campaign was nearly flawless and although McCain/Palin were a total disaster and a goddamn disgrace, it was fun to watch them jabber on. Hillary was another somewhat interesting story, but her campaign was a snooze-fest for the most part.

The best stuff in '08 was Sarah Palin related. And her inevitable return for 2012 is a big part of what's gonna make it super awesome.

Think about it. Obama's approval rating will most likely be as low as it is now (44%) but probably even lower. The economy will still be pretty shitty & that's always the worst thing for an incumbent (unprecedented, massive oil spills don't help either). Obama will be totally stripped of his cool new guy appeal too, so that will even the playing field and make it a lot easier for Republicans to compete. All they'll need to be able to contend is a serious contender.

So, besides Palin, who is there?

Late last year & earlier this year, when Dick Cheney emerged from his dungeon several times to criticize Obama's foreign policy and publicly pray for another terrorist attack in the US, I hadn't counted him out as a serious possibility, but now, given his latest heart problems, I think we can definitely rule him out. Shit, he'd be due for a new LVAD pump--at the very latest--in the middle of his fourth year in office! Bottom line: The only thing Cheney should be planning for these days is his own vampire-themed funeral. You can't not have a pulse and be president; everyone knows that.

As early as last fall, I had a strong feeling that we could see a Gen. David Petraeus 2012 run, but in the aftermath of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's epic selfing in the June 22 Rolling Stone issue, Obama was able to effectively cancel out the possibility of Petraeus 2012 by giving him McChrystal's old job--Afghanistan. Two birds, one stone. You can't honorably abandon your post conducting a major war to run for president; everyone knows that.

And then there's Mitt Romney. He's got a sweet resume, but the country's already totally sick of him. And besides, he's Mormon. You can't be Mormon and be president; everyone knows that.

Nationally-unknown Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty will do better than Mitt. Like Palin, he's formed a PAC and is essentially already running, but he'll get lost in the glare of her freak show. At least he's not Mormon, gawd.

I think we'll definitely see the return of farty ol' Newt Gingrich, who, just a couple weeks ago said, "I've never been this serious" about running for president. He'd be in the fray, but only if this next guy doesn't run, which he probably should; the table is set for him to swoop in and take this thing.

Jeb Bush is the Luke Skywalker of the pack. Mark my words, he is gonna go to war with Obama when the Fox News Tea Party sideshow candidate eventually loses the GOP nomination because although a third of America will love the heck out of her dumb folksy ass, two-thirds will still think--as they do today-- that she is bat-shit crazy.

As it was in 2008, leading up to 2012 the country will be perfectly divided again, wanting change again, and our options are gonna be pretty much more of the same again: The guy we've had the last four bummer years again or another Bush.. again. The problem for Obama and Democrats is that this Bush is the smart one.

And despite America's lingering "Bush fatigue" (referenced in the same 7/21 Quinnipiac poll that says Obama's approval is 44%), I think his familiar looks could work to his advantage among Americans who've never heard of him--kind of like the Schwarzenegger Effect. And it wouldn't take many national TV appearances for Jeb to show that he's not his brother.

Hence, the epic battle I'm predicting if it comes down to these two well-matched opponents.

The good news for Obama is that he'll be able to say he was the first president, among many who tried, to get landmark health care reform accomplished. He'll claim he saved us from total economic ruin with the stimulus, and cleaned up Wall $treet a little bit. These are all good things that sound good that will no doubt be refuted by the elephant candidate.

Obama's accomplished more than most presidents do in a term or two in one-and-a-half years, but most Americans still agree that he kind of sucks. A lot of people think he is too intellectual, diplomatic and European for an American president. In a sense, all he's missing is a pair of George W. Bush balls.

Jeb would be a helluva formidable opponent at what could be a very vulnerable time for Obama. Jeb's got executive experience, (hurricane) crisis experience, Tea Party cred, and is popular in politically-important Florida, as well as among Hispanics, which is an exceedingly non-existent commodity among Republicans these days.

And there are a lot of Hispanics in the U-S of A. Not to mention independents, who may be ready to swing back the other way. According to last Wednesday’s poll: "By a stunning 52 percent to 38 percent, independent voters disapprove of Obama. And by 37 to 27 percent, independents say they would vote for a Republican contender in 2012."

Obama could definitely be toast this next time around. It’s gonna be a good one.

Tea Party's Latest Asshole Representative

Really? Victoria Jackson?

She really talks like that, apparently, which means it’s safe to assume she’s insane. It's important that we establish that right away.

This had somehow eluded me. Until today, I hadn’t heard or seen anything about the far-right Tea Party’s latest quasi-celebrity mascot, 1990’s Saturday Night Live alum Victoria Jackson. The only other one I can even think of that’s dumb enough to speak on behalf of such a moronic group is Michigan’s own Ted Nugent. But the Tea Party puts Victoria Jackson out there as someone who we’re supposed to take seriously for some reason? Like the group’s favorite politician, Sarah Palin, Jackson is clearly retarded. And yet this is who represents the Tea Party people.

Here’s the song Jackson performed at today’s Tax Day Tea Party rally in Washington, D.C.

And here she is on Hannity.

Communism? What does Victoria Jackson know about communism? If this is communism, then I’m all for it. Because, guess what, nothing has changed at all! Everything’s pretty much the same as when George Bush was in power. Does it really matter? If the economy is still in the shithouse in a year or two, Mitt Romney or Dick Cheney will be president in 2012 and he can re-impose capitalism. This chick is the personification of what happens to brainless Americans who watch too much Fox News and eat too many pizza pockets.

The Tea Party is basically a pre-pre Palin 2012 presidential campaign. They are roughly 25-percent of America--probably about half are genuine, ignorant Bible-humping rednecks, and the other half are just bored people who became brainwashed byproducts of Fox News’ casual misinformation campaign against America. As such, they’re understandably scared, angry and hateful--an ugly group who are associated with would-be domestic terrorists, the recently-arrested Hutaree militia from Michigan.

They are the far-right fringe, just as the “9/11 Truthers” are the far-left and believe their government attacked its own people in the most massive conspiracy of all time on Sept. 11. Tea Partiers enjoy images of President Obama portrayed as Hitler just as much as 9/11 Truthers and war protesters did Nazi Bush imagery.

What’s scary though, is that these people champion ignorance. They celebrate it. They’re dumb and proud. They’ve been brainwashed into thinking that anything smart, healthy, or efficient is elitist or, why the hell not, communist. They are so dumb that they’re dangerous.

I’d argue that at its worst, the far-right is Tim McVeigh, blowing up Americans like a stupid, pissed off teenager who’s desperate for a little attention, and at its worst, the far-left among us are eco-terrorists sabotaging logging operations or in the South Pacific trying to deter Japanese whaling ships. The former is a danger to American civilians and the latter is a thorn in the side of industries that are usually acting irresponsibly (environmentally or otherwise) anyway.

And the fact that Fox News regularly promotes the Tea Party protests is evidence that it’s not just a Republican network, it’s a right-wing extremist network because it panders to these lunatics. Granted, MSNBC is more liberal, but they would never promote the “9/ll Truth Movement” day in and day out. That, of course, would be insane. But insanity is all part of the magic of Roger Ailes' Fox News.

Omg! Obama is Hitler, trying to kill us all!

Clearly. I'm rarely one to be overly dramatic, but shit-yourself fear is definitely called for when it comes to this health care reform bill (HR 3200).

President Obama simply will not stop until we are all dead.

He pines for that glorious day when he can finally rest, bloated and lethargic atop an enormous mountain of human bones, laughing evilly as he slowly begins to digest the meat of more than 304 million of us.

Welcome to the new United Socialist States of Death--Population: one. Barack Obama. Victory!

You may have seen these ignoramuses on TV lately.

They tend to be rude old ladies in hideous hats. They have a penchant for Obama-as-Hitler art, and crashing town hall discussions with unintelligible rants inspired by psychopaths with microphones. They are faithful to Jesus Christ, Dale Earnhardt's ghost, and worst of all, Glenn Beck.

God bless these hardworking, empty-headed sons of bitches, but they are the oblivious pawns in a manufactured melodrama designed to scare the shit out of America's beloved grandparents, and anyone else dumb enough to take the bait.

What's ironic, of course, is that Rush Limbaugh and Fox News--America's Patriotism Police--are now terrorizing America's real patriots. The brave adapters who improvised and ultimately endured through the Great Depression and sacrificed everything for the sake of not just our own freedom but that of the entire world during World War II are now being besieged by a fear-and-smear campaign waged by the rabble rousers some of them unfortunately rely on for information.

During the past several months, the media has called Obama's nutty critics 'tea baggers' and 'birthers.' Now we have these town hall disruption squads spewing their death panel nonsense. Essentially, they're Joe The Plumber. They're dumb white folks who've been scared to death by shitbag entertainers and fear-mongerers masquerading as journalists.

Don't get me wrong, I have no pity for the dimwits who are consistently duped by such blatantly obvious hypocrite-douchebag-racists.

But the only thing reminiscient of Nazism here isn't a health care bill or a new administration's philosophy, or the "liberal media's" coverage or non-coverage of it all, but rather this Obama-is-a-Nazi-hellbent-on-murdering-America's-old-people propaganda campaign, custom-designed to terrorize both our senior citizens and our bigoted, Bible-humping belt (read as: the paranoid people with all the guns!).

The mindless lunatics disrupting town hall meetings across the country are not part of a wider, naturally-occuring phenomenon. A few screaming old ladies does not a dissatisfied Middle America make. It's not a "movement" at all. These retards receive their "town hall blitz" instructions from a Website called ResistNet.com at the urging of talking turds like Limbaugh and Beck.

The FreedomWorks commenters are tame by comparison with those found on ResistNet, a project of Grassfire.org. Using a social-networking platform, Grassfire claims some 400,000 members who are dedicated to "resisting" the "Democratic agenda," which, by their lights, includes "open borders" and "taxpayer-funded abortions."

A 501(c)(4) nonprofit, Grassfire has been named as a "stealth political action committee" by Public Citizen. Its founder and president, Steve Elliott, has held up MoveOn.org as a model for where he would like to take his organization.

ResistNet, has become a major hub for turning out hard-core right-wingers to health-care town hall meetings. The organization took in $1.5 million in 2007 (the most recent year for which information is publicly available).

It's difficult to find out much of anything about Elliott; he manages to keep a very low profile. But SourceWatch and Public Citizen report that Grassfire is represented by the Washington public relations firm Shirley & Bannister, whose principal is Craig Shirley, the man who gave us the Willie Horton ad of the 1988 presidential election.

Shirley promoted the movie Stolen Honor a Swiftboat-style smear piece made about 2004 presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. Today, Shirley's clients, according to the Shirley & Bannister Web site, include the National Rifle Association, author Ann Coulter, religious right co-founder Richard Viguerie, and other religious right figures.

But Shirley & Bannister retains ties to GOP establishment figures; its Web site bears an endorsement from William Kristol, who served in the administration of the first George Bush, who happens to be the candidate whose campaign reaped some of its victory from Shirley's Horton ad.

The firm also promotes the books of former Rep. Joe Scarborough, R-Fla., (now of MSNBC) and former George H.W. Bush speechwriter Peggy Noonan (who promised us a "kinder, gentler nation") -- books published by Rupert Murdoch's HarperCollins.

I strongly suggest reading the whole piece. Basically, this latest non-threat was brought to you by the man who dreamed up the Willie Horton ad, which terrified a crime-obsessed, less racially cool country (the L.A. riots were still four years away) into voting for George H. W. Bush by plastering the airwaves with the image of a bad-ass black man and a scary story. This is classic Republican political strategy.

Want more proof that the health care scare is bogus? Take it away, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich! Both were very much for end-of-life counseling (a.k.a advance directives), but now call them death panels and assert that the United States government is brazenly trying to implement euthanasia for old folks, the way Hitler did with Jews, gypsies, the handicapped and homosexuals.

Here's then Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's remarks from April 16, 2008, a day she declared "Healthcare Decisions Day:"

WHEREAS, one of the principal goals of Healthcare Decisions Day is to encourage hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, continuing care retirement communities, and hospices to participate in a statewide effort to provide clear and consistent information to the public about advance directives, as well as to encourage medical professionals and lawyers to volunteer their time and efforts to improve public knowledge and increase the number of Alaska's citizens with advance directives.

WHEREAS, the Foundation for End of Life Care in Juneau, Alaska, and other organizations throughout the United States have endorsed this event and are committed to educating the public about the importance of discussing healthcare choices and executing advance directives.

So just last year Palin was encouraging the citizens of Alaska to have the end-of-life counseling now suggested in the health care reform bill. Of course, she's since changed her mind and now considers end-of-life counseling "downright evil." Last Friday, the former governor wrote on her Facebook page:

"The America I know and love," she wrote, "is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

And Newt Gingrich did the exact same thing. On July 2, he wrote:

More than 20 percent of all Medicare spending occurs in the last two months of life. Gundersen Lutheran Health System in La Crosse, Wisconsin has developed a successful end-of-life, best practice that combines: 1) community-wide advance care planning, where 90 percent of patients have advance directives; 2) hospice and palliative care; and 3) coordination of services through an electronic medical record. The Gundersen approach empowers patients and families to control and direct their care. The Dartmouth Health Atlas has documented that Gundersen delivers care at a 30 percent lower rate than the national average ($18,359 versus $25,860). If Gundersen’s approach was used to care for the approximately 4.5 million Medicare beneficiaries who die every year, Medicare could save more than $33 billion a year.(FULL STORY: Health Care Rx: Across the Country, Some Systems Are Getting It Right – Newt Gingrich (7/2/09).

Advance directives don't sound nearly as scary as death panels, but they are the same exact thing. Before being so against it, Palin encouraged the people of Alaska to educate themselves and make end-of-life plans; Gingrich praised a comprehensive end-of-life planning approach, going so far as to write that it "empowers patients and families to control and direct their care."

But, you know, that was like six weeks ago.

Here's what I think is interesting. Nobody winced when we went and invested more than $674 billion in a backward shitbox of a country. None of these knuckleheads bitching about money today cared at all when our government was pissing it away like drunk sailors in port, slaughtering 100,000 Iraqi civilians and more than 4,000 American boys for reasons unclear.

In America, spending money hand-over-fist is fine so long as it's spent on DEATH. Ironically, if you want to spend money on CARE (life), all the "pro-life" people go apeshit. It's a hazy line--if there even is one--between pro-life and pro-war (pro-death).

And, of course, none of this is even really about health care reform. It's about race. And power. And fear.

In a situation similar to last week in Portsmouth, N.H., cameras caught a protester with a pistol holstered to his leg outside of (yesterday's) event with the president.(FULL STORY: Scott Foster, NBC)

This is the result. Knuckleheads at presidential events.. with loaded weapons. Yesterday it was pistols; today it's assault rifles and pistols with extra ammo!

A man carrying an assault rifle (PICTURED RIGHT) outside the Phoenix Convention Center where President Barack Obama was speaking today [Tues., Aug. 18] has renewed concerns about protesters bringing firearms to presidential events..

Well, I sure hope nothing crazy happens now that the crazy people are sufficiently riled up. Thanks for all your dedicated, patriotic "work," though, Glenn, Rush, you other FOX shitheads.. Hell of a job.

Now I leave you with my favorite Barack Obama related quote I ever read. I feel it hits the nail on the head regarding simple folks' feelings about our president. It's a compilation from a couple of folks in Iowa:

A few paces away, I catch up with a man named Ron Saucier and a woman who would only identify herself as Mary. Ron says his problem with Obama is the integrity thing. "He exaggerates too much," Ron says. "He's not honest."

"OK," I say. "What does he exaggerate about?"

"Well, like that time he was saying he had a white mother and a white grandmother," he says.

I ask him how this is an exaggeration.

"Well, he was saying . . ." he begins. "As if that qualifies him to . . ."

Despite my repeated prodding, Ron seems unable or unwilling to say aloud exactly what he means. Finally, his friend Mary, a grave-looking blonde with fierce anger lines around her eyes, jumps in, points a finger and blurts out one of the all-time man-on-the-street quotes.

"Look, you either are or you aren't," she says.

"And he aren't," Ron says, nodding with relief.

(FULL STORY: Matt Taibbi, "Full Metal McCain," Rolling Stone--June 6, 2008)

Jon Stewart, most trusted name in news.. seriously!

Apparently, when Walter Cronkite croaked, TIME took a poll to find out who is America's most trusted TV news personality. As if the relic newscaster's departure from earth changed anything at all. I mean, the guy was no Michael Jackson. There's no brand new, high stakes competition a la the Cold War arms race among TV news broadcasters now that Walter Cronkite finally died.

It has shit to do with him! I'd say it's an unnecessarily sappy angle for a simple poll but whatever. What the poll revealed, however, was quite surprising.

America's most trusted news person is a comedian. He's Jon Stewart, 46, host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show.

That's right, Stewart received a majority of the vote with 44 percent. Brian Williams got 29 percent; Charlie Gibson, 19 percent; and somehow Katie Couric is even on the board with seven percent.

Also a writer and co-producer of The Daily Show, Stewart himself has repeatedly referred to the show as "fake news." Accordingly, dingbats who don't know any better think those of us who watch The Daily Show are, well, idiots.

You may recall when Bill O'Reilly interviewed Jon Stewart in true asshole fashion on The O'Reilly Factor, calling The Daily Show a "dopey show" whose viewers are "stoned slackers" and "dopey kids." It was September 17, 2004, Bush's second term hung in the balance, and O'Reilly was scared shitless (and rightly so) of Stewart's growing impact and the impending threat he represented--namely, getting young people interested in the absurdity that is American politics and punditry.

Of course the facts show that The Daily Show's viewers are indeed younger, smarter, more educated, more informed about politics, and more affluent than O'Reilly's bitter, old-fangled, gun-loving, moth-eaten hate brigade.

Personally, I knew Stewart had the goods--especially during hardcore wartime--but I guess I'm just surprised that it's not such a secret. Not anymore anyway.

When Americans were asked in a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press to name the journalist they most admired, Mr. Stewart, the fake news anchor, came in at No. 4, tied with the real news anchors Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw of NBC, Dan Rather of CBS and Anderson Cooper of CNN. And a study this year from the center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism concluded that “ ‘The Daily Show’ is clearly impacting American dialogue” and “getting people to think critically about the public square.”

...

As the (The Daily Show's) co-executive producer Rory Albanese noted, juxtapositions of video clips and sound bites are one of the show’s favorite strategies. It might be the juxtaposition of Senator Barack Obama speaking to a crowd of 200,000 in Berlin while Mr. McCain campaigns in a Pennsylvania grocery store. Or it could be a juxtaposition of a politician taking two sides of the same argument. One famous segment featured Mr. Stewart as the moderator of a debate between then-Governor Bush of Texas in 2000, who warned that the United States would end up “being viewed as the ugly American” if it went around the world “saying we do it this way — so should you,” and President Bush of 2003, who extolled the importance of exporting democracy to Iraq.

Often a video clip or news event is so absurd that Mr. Stewart says nothing, simply rubs his eyes, does a Carsonesque double take or crinkles his face into an expression of dismay. “When in doubt, I can stare blankly,” he said. “The rubber face. There’s only so many ways you can stare incredulously at the camera and tilt an eyebrow, but that’s your old standby: What would Buster Keaton do?” --New York Times, August 15, 2009

Anyone who denies Jon Stewart his proper credit should be stuffed in a suitcase and dumped off an Alaskan cruise liner.