Without doubt, both major-party political candidates will try to use the devastation and damage caused by erstwhile hurricane Sandy to their advantage. The incumbent Barack Obama will likely point to the rapid response time and widespread preparedness of thousands of emergency personnel as proof of his competency, as an indication of the methods by which he will tackle the nation's less immediate issues such as high unemployment, growing national debt, and our crumbling infrastructure. The challenger Mitt Romney will likely point to the sluggish federal response and lack of adequate leadership by the current administration as proof that our sitting president must be replaced, that he has a tendency to sit around lackadaisically while America drifts rudderless through the shoals of catastrophe, that his policies have failed, and that he is the greatest threat to the Safety of the People since redcoat placed boot on our soil.
I listened to NPR and checked the news regularly in the days and hours before Sandy made landfall, and, to my knowledge, Mr. Obama analyzed and calculated and fact-checked the storm as much and as thoroughly as he did his primary opponent in their third debate together. (Glaringly omitted from this debate were a couple of the other persons contending for the presidency, among them Dr. Jill Stein and former governor Gary Johnson, who were barred from attending the event and from sparring with their super-slick counterparts by the sinister and undemocratic machinations of the Commission on Electoral Debates a freedom-hating organization controlled jointly by the Democrat and Republican parties.) In all likelihood, Mr. Romney will blame his foe for failing to have prevented every tree from falling and every transistor from shorting out, for not acting quickly enough in his efforts to warn us sodden souls hardest hit by this frankenstorm of its exact path and true destructiveness, for worrying more about controlling the narrative and looking good on camera than visiting shelters and keeping hope alive. Hopefully, however, this time around, Mitt won't blame the few score deaths on the president (as he did following the tragic events in Benghazi) or insinuate that they would not have occurred under his watch, although if were to make such claims, he might alienate a few more swing voters and put himself out of the race altogether, which, in the long run, would work out just fine for liberty and equality here in America.
There is a chance that while he is out smiling condescendingly and surveying the shattered hovels of commoners the Republican challenger will fall into a ditch filled with sewage-mixed seawater and catch such a nasty cold that he will be bedridden for these last few days before the election, sparing us the torture of listening to his pitying smarm and of having to puzzle through the mounting mysteries of his constantly-shifting viewpoints. We shall see how things shake out once the storm of the century has passed. If you are interested in avoiding such disasters in the future, vote Green Party! Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
Showing posts with label debate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label debate. Show all posts
31 October 2012
24 October 2012
no third candidate
Occasionally, while at home or in my car, I listen to NPR, to catch the news and maybe an interesting show or two. In the weeks leading up to the period in this year of 2012 when the electoral collage shall again appoint someone to be president of these United States of America, my local public radio station, WITF, has been focusing much of its attention on this impending appointment, analyzing debates, reporting on the results of different polls, and airing interviews of average citizens and government officials alike. During one segment, this news outlet asked political scientists, pollsters, and focus groups to craft a third-party candidate who might stand a chance of liberating our electoral process from the chains of our current two-party political duopoly (which is effectively a single-party-monopoly, since the asses and the pachyderms are so similar to one another as to be two sides of the same coin). I admit that I only caught the first segment of this show, and part of the second; I did not hear the opinions of the focus groups, only a brief summary thereof; but I fully agreed with the political scientists, who conjured up a candidate bent on freeing America from under the weight of her massively overgrown federal government, a person dedicated to the idea that all persons of legal age should have the right to decide what substances to put into their bodies, be those substances alcohol, hashish, cocaine, tobacco, heroin, or caffeine.
Curiously, however, I did not hear mention of governor Gary Johnson, the candidate for the Libertarian Party in America, who, with a few exceptions, is (with a capital I) the physical embodiment of the the third-party candidate dreamed up by WITF's political scientists. Furthermore, this once-dependable medium failed to mention Dr. Jill Stein, the candidate for America's Green Party, who made such a strong showing at last night's third-party candidates' debate that she has all but won my vote. Pollsters and focus-groups aside (poll numbers are so easily skewed as to make them all but useless, and focus-grouping is for rich people and big corporations that are too risk-averse to make up their own minds), I found it shameful that a public radio group would prove itself so deeply entrenched in the political status-quo as to not even consider mentioning the Libertarian or Green Parties as valid third options for voters sick and tired of America's twin big-business political juggernauts. (It is inconceivable, undemocratic, and unjust that in a land of more than 150,000,000 persons of voting age just 2 political parties have all the power.)
When the wealth of a nation is on the table, the few persons holding the purse-strings will rarely let them go; when the long-term future of a nation is at stake, the fools who got it into the mess in the first place will say anything to shift the blame onto someone else's shoulders. I cannot truly fault WITF, or NPR, for staying with the herd and pretending that debates between but two of the half-dozen candidates contending for the electoral college's appointment to the presidency could in any way change the outcome of the farce that will occur this November 6th. The only hope for America, the only way for us to strip the bloated political machines of their power, is to reshape the entire fabric of this nation; we start by saying, aloud: “This bullshit has gone on for too long”; we start by demanding that the ideals set forth in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution are secured for us diligently and without further waffling; we start by standing out in the cold and in the rain and forcing the slumbering among us back into wakefulness. We can have Liberty, equality, and justice in this land, but only if we are willing to fight for them, every day of our lives. Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
Curiously, however, I did not hear mention of governor Gary Johnson, the candidate for the Libertarian Party in America, who, with a few exceptions, is (with a capital I) the physical embodiment of the the third-party candidate dreamed up by WITF's political scientists. Furthermore, this once-dependable medium failed to mention Dr. Jill Stein, the candidate for America's Green Party, who made such a strong showing at last night's third-party candidates' debate that she has all but won my vote. Pollsters and focus-groups aside (poll numbers are so easily skewed as to make them all but useless, and focus-grouping is for rich people and big corporations that are too risk-averse to make up their own minds), I found it shameful that a public radio group would prove itself so deeply entrenched in the political status-quo as to not even consider mentioning the Libertarian or Green Parties as valid third options for voters sick and tired of America's twin big-business political juggernauts. (It is inconceivable, undemocratic, and unjust that in a land of more than 150,000,000 persons of voting age just 2 political parties have all the power.)
When the wealth of a nation is on the table, the few persons holding the purse-strings will rarely let them go; when the long-term future of a nation is at stake, the fools who got it into the mess in the first place will say anything to shift the blame onto someone else's shoulders. I cannot truly fault WITF, or NPR, for staying with the herd and pretending that debates between but two of the half-dozen candidates contending for the electoral college's appointment to the presidency could in any way change the outcome of the farce that will occur this November 6th. The only hope for America, the only way for us to strip the bloated political machines of their power, is to reshape the entire fabric of this nation; we start by saying, aloud: “This bullshit has gone on for too long”; we start by demanding that the ideals set forth in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution are secured for us diligently and without further waffling; we start by standing out in the cold and in the rain and forcing the slumbering among us back into wakefulness. We can have Liberty, equality, and justice in this land, but only if we are willing to fight for them, every day of our lives. Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
05 October 2012
Obama v Romney
I watched Messieurs Romney and Obama engage in debate on the evening of 03OCT2012. Against my better judgment, I read three different articles before the event occurred (two from American sources, one from Germany), articles that analyzed the candidates' backgrounds and spoke of the varying importance of debates in general and the great importance – for Mitt Romney, at least – of this first of three direct conversations he is set to have with our current Supreme Leader. (I consider the omission from this debate of the other candidates who are running for president, those for example from the Green or Libertarian parties, to be proof of blatant favoritism and evidence of the rampant corruption that exists within our rotten excuse for a democratic process for electing national leadership.) Most ire against America's one-party-system aside, my first impression from last night's debate was just how well the two men had memorized large quanta of data.
The debate consisted largely of the incumbent and his challenger spouting numbers at each other without ever really slinging proper mud; over and over again Romney brought up a sum of 716 billion that ObamaCare supposedly would take from MediCare, allegations Obama did not refute. The President seemed smug and overconfident, standing around idly while his opponent repeated one falsehood after another, with the Governor becoming so condescending that I could hardly stand to keep watching. Obama was slick of tongue and made frequent references to individual Americans whom his policies had supposedly helped, and he made a point to speak into the camera at different times, claiming to address the American people directly; Romney was having none of it, though, latching himself onto his opponent's scruff and tearing into him with the ferocity of a religious-extremist white Republican. At the end of the debate, as Jim Lehrer excused himself into perpetual anonymity, Mitt's family mounted the stage (I only saw Michelle Obama, not their daughters), with Romney pointing out his five sons, having completely failed to mention at any point during the debate that he had daughters. (Perhaps this was an attempt to shield from lustful gazes the one gorgeous female by his side, a stunning young lady with a wide mouth and glittering eyes, but it was more than likely an indication of the value that Mitt puts on persons who happen to have two (2) X chromosomes.)
As the debate focused on the economy, I was hardly surprised that neither candidate addressed our nation's underlying problems, these being unconstitutional federal expansion, excessive presidential power, failure to properly secure the Blessings of Liberty, prosecution of individuals for pursuing their Happiness, giving hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to a military-industrial-complex that survives only when we are at war, and erosion of the rights of Ynki women to the contents of their stomachs and of homosexual Americans to marry. If it was among Romney's goals to show that his would be the better way, that his would be the more logical choice for the next four years, that his ideas and his vision would trump those of the incumbent, he failed miserably; such was the similarity of the two men, such was their overlap, that one could easily make the argument for staying with Obama rather than shifting the enormous weight of our hopes and dreams onto Romney's untested shoulders. These are all just my opinions, though, and opinions are dangerous things, so I shall stop, for now, so as to reexamine my modus operandi and make adjustments. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
The debate consisted largely of the incumbent and his challenger spouting numbers at each other without ever really slinging proper mud; over and over again Romney brought up a sum of 716 billion that ObamaCare supposedly would take from MediCare, allegations Obama did not refute. The President seemed smug and overconfident, standing around idly while his opponent repeated one falsehood after another, with the Governor becoming so condescending that I could hardly stand to keep watching. Obama was slick of tongue and made frequent references to individual Americans whom his policies had supposedly helped, and he made a point to speak into the camera at different times, claiming to address the American people directly; Romney was having none of it, though, latching himself onto his opponent's scruff and tearing into him with the ferocity of a religious-extremist white Republican. At the end of the debate, as Jim Lehrer excused himself into perpetual anonymity, Mitt's family mounted the stage (I only saw Michelle Obama, not their daughters), with Romney pointing out his five sons, having completely failed to mention at any point during the debate that he had daughters. (Perhaps this was an attempt to shield from lustful gazes the one gorgeous female by his side, a stunning young lady with a wide mouth and glittering eyes, but it was more than likely an indication of the value that Mitt puts on persons who happen to have two (2) X chromosomes.)
As the debate focused on the economy, I was hardly surprised that neither candidate addressed our nation's underlying problems, these being unconstitutional federal expansion, excessive presidential power, failure to properly secure the Blessings of Liberty, prosecution of individuals for pursuing their Happiness, giving hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to a military-industrial-complex that survives only when we are at war, and erosion of the rights of Ynki women to the contents of their stomachs and of homosexual Americans to marry. If it was among Romney's goals to show that his would be the better way, that his would be the more logical choice for the next four years, that his ideas and his vision would trump those of the incumbent, he failed miserably; such was the similarity of the two men, such was their overlap, that one could easily make the argument for staying with Obama rather than shifting the enormous weight of our hopes and dreams onto Romney's untested shoulders. These are all just my opinions, though, and opinions are dangerous things, so I shall stop, for now, so as to reexamine my modus operandi and make adjustments. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
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