“Recently Kevin Phillips, former chief political strategist for Richard Nixon and author of “Wealth and Democracy,” said he no longer believes that democracy even exists in this country, but has in fact been replaced by a plutocracy — a government controlled by its wealthiest individuals to promote their own specific agenda.” Full article. [via JOHO]
Category Archives: Politics & Government
Why Rush’s TV show flopped
Mark Whicker, writing for The Orange County Register, calls talk shows “a crack in the mirror of America. The reason that mudslinging works on the radio is simple: On the radio, Limbaugh is speaking to the dittoheads, the disciples who swallow everything. On TV, Limbaugh has to address the population as a whole.” [MercuryNews.com]
Why shouldn’t I work for the N.S.A.?
“Why shouldn’t I work for the N.S.A.? That’s a tough one, but I’ll take a shot. Say I’m working at the N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I’m real happy with myself, ’cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people that I never met and that I never had no problem with get killed. Now the politicians are sayin’, “Send in the marines to secure the area” ’cause they don’t give a shit. It won’t be their kid over there, gettin’ shot. Just like it wasn’t them when their number was called, ’cause they were pullin’ a tour in the National Guard. It’ll be some kid from Southie takin’ shrapnel in the ass. And he comes home to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, ’cause he’ll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain’t helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. They’re takin’ their sweet time bringin’ the oil back, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin’ play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain’t too long ’til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy’s out of work and he can’t afford to drive, so he’s walking to the fuckin’ job interviews, which sucks ’cause the schrapnel in his ass is givin’ him chronic hemorroids. And meanwhile he’s starvin’ ’cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special they’re servin’ is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I’m holdin’ out for somethin’ better. I figure, fuck it, while I’m at it, why not just shoot my buddy, take his job and give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.”
From Good Will Hunting, written by Matt Damon & Ben Affleck
No harm, no foul.
I am embarrassed that John Ashcroft is from Missouri. And if all the radio stations in America want to stop playing my CD, well, tough shit. My dislike for the guy goes back to the mid-eighties when he was governor of Missouri. In those days there was an annual fund-raising basketball game between folks in the governor’s office and members of the capital press corps. I got invited because I worked for a statewide, radio news network.
When we got to the gym we learned that the governor had salted his team with a few good men from the Missouri State Highway Patrol. But it was all for a good cause so what’s a few ringers? It stopped being fun when the governor started throwing elbows and whining about getting fouled. If you’ve played much pick-up ball, you’ve run into guys like this. They get pissed real easy. Call lots of fouls but bitch if you call one on them. If we’d been on a playground, someone would have knocked him on his ass. But he knew –and we knew– that wasn’t an option in this game. Looking back, Reverend Ashcroft is the perfect guy to go to DC, cover up the naked statues, and keep an eye on everyone. I think the year was 1984.
Dennis Miller on Congress and politics
“Congress is just a place where we send mediocre men to get Earl Scheibed into looking kind of, vaguely, consequential. And politics is just a bullshit world where “my esteemed colleague” means “this prick here.”
“Fat guys are the chirping canaries in the mineshaft of freedom.”
– From Dennis Miller’s sixth HBO special
Why politicians lie
They promise that if we elect them, they’ll serve just one term and welch on the deal next election. They promise to vote one way on an issue, and vote the other. Their explanations and rationalizations are stock and without imagination and we voters understand they will do anything to get re-elected. Why? The job doesn’t pay that much. The power is intoxicating but how much do they really have. I think the deeper motivation is they’ll do anything to avoid being sent back to the little towns from which they came.
Please god, I can’t go back to Bumfuck, Missouri, with it’s Wal-Mart and the little coffee shop where the Good Old Boys talk politics every morning. I can’t go back there and run the family business and live out my life so far from here. I won’t go back. I will lie, cheat, steal, corrupt, connive… there is nothing I will not do to stay here. Please forgive me, god. Amen.
And when one party unseats the other and takes away the powerful jobs, the losers will take any shitty, boring job with some meaningless commission or state agency rather than go back to Moberly or West Plains or Kennett. Like some virus that goes dormant until the host is weak enough for it to flare back up. Which is where term limits came in. It was the only way we voters could innoculate ourselves. Opponents warn that term limits will result in bad government. Uh, we already have bad government. It’ll be worse, they promise (threaten?). We’ll take our chances.