THOU SHALT NOT BE STUPID – The Bible of Common Sense sez, “Know what you’re doing before you do it.”

Colin Powell warned the Bush administration about their twin Wars of Error with the Pottery Barn Rule – “You break it, you buy it.” Unfortunately, the Bush and Obama administrations chose long term leases with options to wreck the US economy.

In the beginning, the Crapweasel-in-Chief flexed his military muscle by starting a war on the Taliban in Afghanistan. Then, Bush the Lesser’s terminal case of ADD set the table for Operation Shit in Your Mess Kit in Iraq. As it became clearer the wars, supported by the Coalition of the Inept”, were cesspools of money-sucking, people-killing swill Bush and the Big Dick Cheney doubled down on surge and puffery.

The puffery was the worst. As regular as a cheap watch Condi Rice stood with Witless George to remind us victory was just around the corner…for 3-years running. When that message flopped, as anyone with an IQ greater than a doughnut hole could see it would, the chant became, “If we leave now Iraq and Afghanistan will descend into civil war.”

Sadly, it was one of the few prescient things to come out of the whole shameful experience. A “no-duh” revelation of mammoth proportions.

We recently snuck out of Iraq in the middle of the night and even after leaving an Army of you and I paid mercenaries behind, the place is still a mess and the fighting is heating up again. The Real War has now droned on for over a decade and the Ombamulans are ready to pull the plug there.  They will find, as many other Afghan “conquerors” have found, that keeping roving bands of war lords from slitting each other’s throats just for the hell of it is a lot harder than it looks. Chaos will follow us across the bridge out of the place next year just at it did with the Soviets.

Four years too late, the Obamunist finally sees it isn’t worth pumping money into a house with a broken foundation. He is pulling back and predictably his opponents are blaming him for the “failure” of wars he didn’t start with outcomes already set and Bush revisionism spouting like a whale pod with allergies. He may be a slow learner, but his record is 8 years to 4 in the football game of failure. Just as his Senate war vote was ill-advised and cowardly it’s better to wake up late than never.

Make no mistake, we victimized ourselves with the Pottery Rule 100-fold, but crapped on the people of both places 1000-fold. We bombed Iraq back to the Stone Age and Afghanistan back to the 6,000-year old Christian creation. The places are far more dysfunctional than before we decided to “liberate” them from a workable infrastructure and all those pesky family members. The Iraqis are returning to the same feudalism that even a despot like Hussein could barely hold together. And the Afghans are, well, about the same as before.

People are blabbering about attacking far more talented Team Iran soon. Clearly some of us have forgotten that Iran soundly whipped second-string Iraq’s ass in the War Bowl. It’s time to start planning a response better than the Wars of Error debacle lest we bomb the hell out of someone with the same negative effect as Iraqistan.

It’s another stupendous, “no duh, moment”.

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Six years after noted grifter and late Alaska Senator Ted Stevens showed his impeccable technology credentials by likening the Internet to a “series of tubes”, our erstwhile Presidential nominees struggle with the most basic pre-21^st Century gadgets. Gadgets like cameras and audio tape. This is a disturbing trend for a gaggle of walking egos intent on becoming the most audio and video-taped person on the planet.

Them’s the Breaks

No candidate is totally consistent in their speeches, especially when their life is one extended press junket. We expect our candidates to have positions on every imaginable issue, but that’s simply not possible. There are far too many and some are too complex for your average Tea Bagger to hear above the “Death to the Obamunist” chants. Questions come by the bushel and candidates sometimes take an on-the-fly position to fill the dead air with something that turns out is wrong, indefensible, and inconsistent with dozens of other stands they take. When you talk for a living, them’s the breaks.

A candidate will repeatedly be excoriated as a flip-flopper if this happens, and there are only two ways to deal with it. If, like Romney, you change positions like a hummingbird with a nectar jones, you claim you never made the statement or were “misquoted”.  Let’s call this the Romney Method. Or, the Gingrich Method, in which the candidate simply labels the questions “stupid” and refuses to answer when they’ve talked themselves into a corner.

But, both methods have a critical technological fault – video tape.  Let’s call this the Jon Stewart Effect.

Misquotable Quotes

Since candidates are publicly paraded like prize ponies it’s likely that when they change course an inconvenient camera or live mic will catch it.  Suddenly the Jon Stewart Effect kicks in. Jon will make a joke accompanied by some video, and then tell another joke accompanied by video showing a 180 degree spin – a move that even the most talented Olympic figure skaters can’t manage.  It’s hard to defend a flip flop or “misquote” when you’re right there on unedited tape flipping and flopping or proving that your “misquote” was really just a “quote” – one that’s undeniably verbatim.

Newt’s method is no better. He can refuse to answer the question, but chances are he’s already on the record facing in a different ideological direction. Invariably, Jon will pick up on it, or worse, the lamestream media – these days, the right wing media – will hand him his ass on a platter. If video technology doesn’t get him, displaying his monumental hubris will reveal him to be the vicious little prick he is. Not a winning strategy, unless he wants to piss on everyone – including current and ex-wives –  often enough they will do anything possible to ruin his self-declared moment in the sun just for shits and giggles.

Campaigners, here’s some advice: Assume every word, thought, and deed – from pillow talk to Iowa pork belly prices – is on tape somewhere. Assume that any contradictions will show up at the most inopportune time. When it does, be prepared to explain in simple words – and this is important…once and only once – that it was an honest change in view of new facts. After that, you said it, you own it, and you better stick to it. There will be no more opportunities to back out on something you’ve clearly said on the record, because, urm, you are ALWAYS on the record. Handle the impact of audio/visual like a technological problem and no one can contradict you, other than you. You can’t compare and contrast a position if there is nothing to compare it to.

READY! ACTION!

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ADRIAN! - "In this corner...Rockin' Rick 'Rocky' Santorum"

I don’t know if Rick Santorum is a racist. I know he says many stupid things, so he might be an idiot, or maybe a racist idiot. It is hard to tell when a person has a brain the size of an empty, withered walnut.

But, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume he’s an earnest man without a trace of racism and that he really believes, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn their money and provide for themselves and their families. The best way to do that is to get the manufacturing sector of the economy rolling.”

Minorities are as Rare as Untipped Iowan Cows
Let’s forget that most welfare payments go to white people and let’s forget that 91% of Iowans are white. Minorities in Iowa are as rare as untipped cows.

Getting manufacturing going is important. If it was working everyone in the economy would be better off, even the rich. However, many American manufacturers are so far gone they can’t come back. Plus, there are fewer people who can afford products, regardless of where they’re made. The golden goose has been fed rat poison by over-consumption and under-manufacturing.

Santorum rightly makes the point that while minorities aren’t the bulk of the welfare population, they are disproportionately represented. You know, sort of like the 1 Percenters. So, programs to help them get out and, “give them the opportunity to go out and earn their money and provide for themselves and their families,” is a tough, withered walnut shell to crack.

Santorum and others of his ilk want to put the poor back to work without funding schools, job training, medical care, affordable housing, or anything else that jacks up Bill Gates’ tax rate. In fact, some Republicans want the poor to pay more in taxes. What sort of math allows you to raise the poor’s taxes by 50% without understanding that 50% of nothing is, urm, NOTHING?!!

Welfare programs are hugely expensive, though not as expensive as other expenditures being stalked by ravenous budget-wolves. But assuming welfare will magically go away if we simply stop paying is wishful thinking – like absorbing millions of illegal aliens and then assuming they’ll disappear if we throw up some chain link halfway between Arizona and New Mexico.

Yes Rick, there is a problem. But no, busying yourself with the sex lives of other people doesn’t solve it. And further, this isn’t a new problem. It is the result of kicking a very large can down a very long road.

Many welfare programs were born of LBJ’s Great Society. The Great Society was an admirable effort to lift poor sharecroppers above poverty by trying to balance the economic and racial inequities of American society. In the end, all it did was move people to housing projects were there is no sharing or crops and minorities are contained so they wouldn’t be so noticeable.

The great failing was assuming you could start by giving kids something to eat, a place to live, and a school to go to while ignoring the generations of people who were already past the point of lifting up.

Mommy the Crackhead and Daddy the Pimp
You can teach a kid how to read and count, but Mommy being a crackhead and Daddy being a drug-dealing pimp isn’t exactly world-class role modeling. Too many people are simply warehoused in crumbling housing, ducking gang raids, and learning that dealing drugs makes way more money than flipping burgers. All the while listening to nitwits preach that fixing the problem is as simple as stopping payments for the crumbling housing and decrpit schools.

Santorum probably thinks that being poor trumps being a minority. He may not want black folk in his neighborhood, but that wouldn’t be as bad as a white family of project transfers moving in next door. He just doesn’t like one, the other actually drives down his property values.

Being poor or a minority is a problem in this country. Sometimes they’re inextricably linked, other times you can tease economics from bigotry. But either way simply stopping funds and pretending that all the downtrodden need is some paternal advice to get a job won’t make it go away. No matter how hard he might try, Rick can’t make these people and their problems invisible. He can’t pretend their problems aren’t the nation’s problem.

In the end Rick’s solution is no solution at all, it’s merely another kick of the can. If we want to lessen the need for welfare, we’ll need to reform what we spend on, not how much we spend. Throwing cash at ill-advised, half-assed, ineffective programs is just as bad as doing nothing.

And nothing is exactly the change Rick’s plan will make.

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VICTORIA’S SING ALONG TIME – Come on all you right wingers, sing along!

There is no shortage of Americans full of crackpot ideas and imagined conspiracies. They’re usually part of an unknown cast preaching to like-minded goobs. But occasionally someone with a not-so-unknown name takes to the bloody pulpit. 

Truth be told the left and right both have plenty of celebrities in their ideological quivers. But the right’s stable may be smaller and makes up in bat-shit craziness what it loses in quantity.

Ted Nugent is the prototypical conservative in camo. The Nooge never misses a chance to link omnipresent commies to nefarious plots bent on confiscating cross bows or some other equally deranged story. A lifetime of hearing Cat Scratch Fever set to 11 has damaged the man. But Nooge, step aside. There’s a new crackpot in town.

Join the Victoria Jackson Nation

Victoria Jackson made a comedy career of dressing like a 10-year old girl and speaking in a voice that sounded like Carol Channing on helium. The combination was good enough to win her an SNL role and star in a few forgettable movies that required a vacuous girl wearing a tutu and playing the ukulele.

After a long stint playing a Florida homemaker – why is it always Florida – she’s back with a show of her own and a political ideology that makes a Michele Bachmann/Sarah Palin Siamese Twin sound positively grounded.

Vic’s latest rant – branded Victoria Jackson’s Still A Crazy Asshole – suggests she has fallen under the sway of the, President Obama is behind all of this and we will all have to “convert or be killed!” crowd. In her mind, Anti-Christ Hussein Obama will force everyone to join the Muslim Brotherhood and accept sharia as the law of the land. This isn’t an unknown position amongst the ignorati, even though it is illogical using their own logic: How can Obama be too stupid to tie his own shoes yet carry out what would have to be a cover up roughly the size and complexity of the Manhattan project?

Some might argue that her return to TV, helming a show on PolitiChics, is just an extension of her career acting like a bubble head. Others would argue she isn’t “acting”. If she weren’t so damn scary, in the same way Rick Santorum is scary, you could probably take the show and her actions as an inspired comedy patterned after Andy Kaufmann.

But I think she actually believes this stuff. First of all, she ain’t that funny, as her movie Casual Sex proves. Secondly, if Fox News hosts question your sanity, you have to be well and truly beyond the bend.

But the scariest part of her is that she fantasizes these things and is a focal point for her fellow like-minded fans. There are a goodly number of people who share her beliefs and TV makes it all that much easier to rally the outliers.

Even if they don’t wear tutus and play the ukulele.

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HE'S A SWEET, SWEET ANGEL - Newt likes to say stupid things and then blame the media for reporting on them. Click photo for more Newt Nudes >>

One by one, the Republican presidential field has come to ruination and they’ve blamed the media, or mainstream media (MSM), or Lamestream media in Palinspeak – at every turn.  They are apparently of the mistaken opinion, as was US Senate candidate Sharron Angle, that journalists should only ask questions candidates want to answer. As news consumers and master media manipulators themselves that belief alone should be a disqualification for lack of critical thinking skills.

When faced with proof of their objectionable behavior, they vigorously deny it. Even a world-class nimrod can see that is a surefire strategic loser. In taking that position politicians deny the existence of videotape, reporters’ notebooks, and public records. Oh, and any lick of common sense too. Without these contradictions in their truthy narratives, The Daily Show and Fox News would starve for a lack of comedy gold. And, Newt Gingrich would still be unstoppable and not a fast-sinking nitwit outfitted with concrete overshoes.

When repeated denials collapse under their own weight the fraidy-cat graftmeisters often blame the media for gotcha journalism. The Half-Term Schoolmarm was a master practitioner of this craft – even if it is the least successful strategy of all. When Katie Couric asked her which newspapers or magazines she regularly read she stammered, “All of them”. Unsurprisingly, Couric and the general public didn’t buy that. If you’re running for President of the Free World and you’re tripped up by a question you could have answered with Time, the Wasilla News Weasel, or Reader’s Digest your mind is as nimble as a saguaro cactus with one of its quills on the “noo-cu-ler” football.

She whined and stamped her sensible pumps and said something on the order of, “That was gotcha journalism, you betcha. They wouldn’t have asked Barack Hussein Obama that.”

In fact, they probably wouldn’t have, although he got plenty of equally dangerous questions too.  However in this case, she was rumored to be aggressively incurious, much like George the Lesser. Since escaping his Reign of Error was nigh, it’s a legitimate question to ask about that uncuriosity. After all, you could accuse The Messiah of many things, but being incurious or poorly spoken wasn’t one of them.

I don’t always buy the flip-flopper angle either. There are numerous legitimate reasons to change a position and if you can reasonably explain them you can minimize their damage. But, changed too often – Mitt Romney, I’m talking about you – you are either extremely hypocritical at best or a pander bear at worst.

The media – Hannity, Rush, O’Reilly, and Maddow you are the media too – makes its share of mistakes. But they share a kinship with all politicians and others they cover. When they make a mistake it’s in full view of the public just like when politicians act like stupid lunkheads. Both careers need a certain amount of aplomb that all too often is sorely missing.

And one other thing: perceptions of media bias are one of the few bipartisan things left in America. If the same story, with reasonably consistent facts, gets complaints from both left and right it’s a sign that the bias may be more between your ears than splashed across a screen or paper.

So quit yer bellyachin’ and act like rational adults.

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