So yeah. It's been months since the last post here. And even longer since the last post by me. A lot of shit's happened, keeping me away from this.
I'm going for it. With half a year left, it's time I crossed the Atlantic and dipped my toe into the murky, santorum-stained pool that is the US presidential election.
It's fair to say at this point that if Obama had any intention of rolling back Bush's hideous 'keep Arabs in prison for the fun of it' schemes, his 'spy on everyone everyfuckingwhere' schemes and his terrifying overstepping of the checks on executive privilege that stop a President from being a monarch, he would have done so already. It's very unlikely that he'll do anything of the sort for his second term, but you know what? Despite all that, he is still the lesser of two evils. Thanks to the Republican candidates willingly turning their entire primary nomination procedure into a contest to see who can go the craziest to appease the lunatic fringe of their voters, Obama knows for a fact that there's a hell of a lot of bad shit he can do between now and November while remaining the lesser of two evils. So thanks, Republicans, for making sure the bar for qualifying as a feasible presidential candidate was set so low that so far the only lifeforms able to fit underneath it have been tapeworms and...well, your own failed candidates.
Let's see some of the funnier ones who've already shot their bolt here, shall we, and remind ourselves of just what the sweet screaming fuck they tried to get away with:
HERMAN CAIN: Complete fucking idiot. Apparently decided that running a country is the same as running a chain of third-rate pizza joints, and lifted his tax code from a vidja game designed to make half-arsed micromanagement fans think that adjusting percentages on big sliders was the most work you had to do to fix a financial crisis. At one point tried the slogan 'Let's Beat Obama With A Cain', in what has to be the ballsiest attempt by a black guy to appeal to unreconstructed racist shitkickers in the history of ever. In a similar vein, actually went before audiences and claimed that for President, QUOTE, "We need a leader, not a reader." Claimed he wanted to electrocute immigrants, then said he didn't mean it when he realised sane people had heard him, then said no he actually meant it after all. He blamed liberals for the crucifixion of Jesus. He thought "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" was in the Constitution. He thought federal tax law wasn't in the Constitution, when in fact it is in Article One of the Fuckmothering Constitution. He wanted to put an upper page limit of THREE on any law anyone wanted to pass. He seemed to base his entire presidential run on looking at Sarah Palin and deciding she had too much class, too much knowledge about foreign policy and not quite enough skeletons in her closet. Finally brought down by a running tackle from a decades-long sexual escapade that was actually kinda tame by Republican standards. It was consensual, it was heterosexual and between adults. There weren't even any diapers involved.*
RICK 'SILENT P' SANTORUM: Ohhhh, this motherfucker. He had a lot going for him, in the eyes of the crazy foaming zealot demographic. Whiter than Herman Cain. More Christian-zealot than Mitt Romney. More god-given man-parts (and thus by zealot logic more leadership ability) than Michelle Bachmann. Thanks to a genius little viral-rebranding move by Dan Savage, Santorum's name was rapidly redefined so that he lived up to it perfectly (look it the fuck up, I'm not typing that out) but it didn't so much as slow down his attempts to legislate his thinly-veiled anti-gay barbarism. Example: "The reason the left has gone after same-sex marriage is because
it’s a two-fer. When you redefine marriage, you cheapen marriage. You
make it into something less valuable, less special... it is a sure bet
that will undermine faith." He's almost right, in that gay marriage will undermine certain belief systems common to Christianity, as well as some of the other more authoritarian religious systems out there. It's not gay people's fault, it's not an intentional thing, it's just happening. Same reason that the act of looking up undermines the beliefs of people who think the sky doesn't exist. Happily married gay couples undermine the stupid idea that gay marriage will lead to man-on-dog sex and give EVERYONE AIDS. But that's not faith, because faith is belief without evidence. Believing in things that're proven to be untrue is denial, not faith, and one of the best things we can do on this planet is undermine denial whenever we see it. It would fix the creationism-in-schools problem for a fucking start.
Aside from this, Santorum's campaign was pretty lacklustre. His entire platform was basically 'BIBLE BIBLE BIBLE', which was doomed from the fucking start, and his recent withdrawal was a whimper rather than the hilarious bang I was half-expecting: Rick himself being caught buried up to his nuts in a gay dog.
MICHELLE BACHMANN: Where to start? As early as 2008, this walking pile of crazy was declaring that it was essential to dig up Alaska for the few weeks' worth of oil that might be under there, and in October of that year she actually went on Hardball and implied that Congresspeople who disagreed with her were traitors, saying they should be investigated for 'anti-American views'. And then claimed Chris Matthews actually laid a trap for her to get her to say that. What the fuck.
Bachmann also suffered something of a setback to her chances among sane people when two things were made public about her husband: first, he runs an 'ex-gay clinic' in Minnesota, AKA a fucking psychological torture facility for people who've been convinced by their families and culture that the way they fall in love is morally wrong. Second, Michelle would do the biblical thing and submit to his judgement even if she were made President. So she wouldn't really be running the country, she'd just be handling the bits of governance that her husband didn't dictate to her. Which is basically like being a secretary who's also been divinely commanded to submit to the boss' sexual whims and bear his children. Because that's the kind of brain that could run a country perfectly. Throw in some perfunctory red-baiting(because all the cool wingnuts were calling the nasty black guy a communist) and the usual creationist bullshit forced onto schools wherever she could manage in her Minnesota district, and that's about it for her. Not even very entertaining as a candidate, beyond inspiring me to invent the word 'Cocktrocious' (to this day, that's only been used twice on the Internet if Google is to be believed. This must be rectified.)
RON PAUL: Now this guy was crazy. From his racist-as-fuck newsletters marketed to the tinfoil-hat black-helicopter survivalist nutcases in the Nineties, to his defence of those newsletters in the later nineties, to the public's rediscovery of those newsletters in 2011 and his claim never to have read them or been involved with them. There were all sorts of things wrong with Ron Paul's views, let alone his campaign, and having his picture taken with fucking actual I-shit-you-not nazis can't have helped. The sad thing is that he had more sane ideas than all the other Republican candidates did, and he was still so frothingly insane that it was a bad idea to even consider him as a candidate at all. Being right about Wall Street fuckery and cheating bankers, for example, didn't mean he was also right when he wanted to disband the EPA and remove the main federal restrictions on what corporations were allowed to pump into the soil and water. And that whole newsletter thing? First he defended them, then claimed he'd never read them. The latter had to involve either lying out of his arse or going senile and honestly forgetting they'd ever existed at all. Neither of these is a good qualification for Leader of the Free World, which people seemed to twig on because Paul's candidacy didn't last long after that, and now seems to exist solely on the bumper stickers of people who completely miss the fucking point that they're driving down STATE HIGHWAYS. Chumps.
NEWT GINGRICH: Ohhh boy. This candidacy had everything. So did the candidate, including a history of absolutely reprehensible shit like serving divorce papers to his first wife while she was on a cancer ward, and then marrying his mistress. Then divorcing that mistress to marry his *new* mistress. All the while promoting the 'sanctity of marriage', which apparently allows straight men to shrug women on and off like they're trying out shirts, but makes women into sluts if they end one and can't ever fit gay people of any kind ever. So when the morally bankrupt womaniser who spent the Nineties chastising Bill Clinton for being a less morally bankrupt womaniser started outlining what his policies might be, we all knew it would be interesting - even before he declared he would arrest judges who didn't agree with him. The way a laughing poodle with hands is interesting. Let's have a look.
"If he will accept it, I will ask John Bolton to be Secretary of
State. But I will only appoint him if he will agree that his first job
is the complete and thorough transformation fo the State Department and
the replacement of the current Foreign Service culture with a new
entrepreneurial and aggressive culture dedicated to the proposition that
defending freedom and defending America is the first business of the
State Department, not appeasing opponents." - so his foreign policy idea seemed to be screaming 'FUCK YOU' at the entire world by making them have conversations with someone who absolutely hates other countries. Nice.
"Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits
of working and have nobody around them who works, so they literally have
no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all
day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it’s
illegal." - Newt 'clarifying' his budget plan to save school districts a few bucks, as if 'have the black kids clean up after the white kids' needed clarification.
With ideas like these, you can see why people who were, oh, parents might have something to say about his chances. As well as those who recognise that while America is very heavily armed, that does not make it necessary or remotely wise to flip off the rest of the planet at every opportunity. But that's Newt all over. Ugly to the core. No wonder the fucker's bid collapsed.
It's possible I've missed someone. If I did, they were such a fucking joke that I've currently forgotten they were ever even considered for it. Either way, looking at this lineup of chumps they were willing to put in the seat instead of Mitt 'My Wife Works Hard Through Our Nannies' Romney, they've got absolutely no chance. Which means Obama will be under no pressure at all to act like a decent human being to keep his seat. Thanks, you bastards.
*Your Magical Truthsaying Bastard Mick-approved google search for this is "David Vitter diaper prostitute". Bring a vomit bag, but notice that to this day there is no detail on whether he was wearing the diaper, or the hooker was. Fucking mainstream media.
