US Presidential Campaign - view from other side of pond

[martin48]

Your choices for president: an android, a creationist neurosurgeon or a postcoital cat

The absurdly long run-up to the US election has begun. This will be the first election fought under new rules where there are no limits to campaign donations: a change brought in on the grounds of “free speech”, when the supreme court decided that the Koch brothers not being able to say, “We own the president,” infringed their rights under the first amendment. Personally, I think Obama will be quite lonely once it’s all over, not least because he has allowed the police to kill most of the other black people.
Differences between the candidates are usually so slight that what the Democratic frontrunner thinks is pretty much just what the Republican frontrunner thinks on the days that he remembers to take his meds. But in something of a format twist, Bernie Sanders – an old-school socialist – has crowdfunded himself into a credible position for the Democratic nomination. I sincerely hope he wins, if only so that we see the first inauguration speech made from inside a giant, bulletproof hamster ball. The Democratic frontrunner is Hillary Clinton, a ruthless, steel-haired troll doll. Hers is the face that would haunt a lot of Libyans’ nightmares, if they were still alive. Unfortunately for her election prospects, Hillary has never quite learned to introduce humour or compassion into her speaking voice and on a good day sounds like an android trying to trick the last human out of a bunker.
At last week’s Republican debate, the candidates accused CNBC of displaying liberal bias. One reading would be that the GOP candidates are now so rightwing that they make a giant media conglomerate look liberal. Let’s not forget that the essential message of a Republican candidate is a tricky sell. That you love America, but hate all the groups that make up America. That you love democracy, but hate people. Donald Trump, who at best looks like a plughole in an orangutan sanctuary, is probably only running for president because this dimension doesn’t have a Superman he can give a hard time to. His hair, looking like a slovenly, postcoital cat, is actually one of the least weird things about him. He is lacking in charm or wit and is almost ferociously inarticulate. The US public has identified with him strongly. It seems that the electorate, possibly bored with rational thought, is toying with the idea of cutting out the middleman and just electing one of the business class through sheer force of Stockholm syndrome.

The old politics is dull, and what could be more exciting than electing a man who might declare war on the sea? His plans to build a giant wall sealing the US border with Mexico are entertaining, not least because it would be interesting to see a nation as heavily armed as America go into cocaine withdrawal. Somehow, I always imagine that Trump spends the evenings with his forehead pressed against the cold glass of an aquarium, talking telepathically to the tormented albino squid in which he has hidden his soul.
Indeed, the whole Republican field offers a bracing challenge to conventional notions of sanity. The current poll leader is Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon who happens to be a Seventh Day Adventist and creationist. Creationists have often made me doubt evolution, but probably not in the way they think. His taxation policy is based on Biblical tithing, taking economic pointers from people who had a GDP of one golden calf.
Why do both parties rage against bias in what is actually a laughably servile media? Maybe it’s because the political class have an instinctive contempt for asking the public to decide anything meaningful, such as policy. So their campaigns have to be largely symbolic affairs about hope or hard work or whatever flavour of horseshit is polling well. Most campaign spending goes on advertising (65% of Obama’s “grassroots” campaign of 2012 was media spend) and advertising speaks in symbolism. Thus the parties may actually distrust any kind of rational inquiry, as what they’re saying doesn’t, and can’t, make any sense. Or maybe the reality of what they’re voting on is something nobody dare express. They’re voting on the exact speed of the drift toward a future of armies run by corporations corralling permanently travelling communities of cooks, cleaners and sex workers, as they underbid each other outside the entrances to gated communities to ensure they’re the ones let inside to service the fortunate. A future where the pursuit of happiness will make about as much sense as mounting an expedition to reach the horizon.
Of course it could be that the whole election is a bit like The X Factor, and they put a few lunatics in the early rounds to lure us into something we promised we’d never engage with again. By the end we’ll be back to two corporate glove puppets belting out the same tired standards. And no matter how bad the choice is, we’ll always have a preference. Clinton will be offering an expanded kill list of official enemies, secret corporate courts, and her first speech about Palestine will sound like it was written by the Hulk. A lot of otherwise rational minds will be praying for her to win.

The Guardian 4 Nov

[Stavros]

Your choices for president: an android, a creationist neurosurgeon or a postcoital cat

The Guardian 4 Nov

You forgot to add the link. Frankie Boyle claims to be a comedian, but he is just an offensive prick who can't raise a laugh without insulting someone -or everyone.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/c...-frankie-boyle

[Laphroaig]

You forgot to add the link. Frankie Boyle claims to be a comedian, but he is just an offensive prick who can't raise a laugh without insulting someone -or everyone.

Maybe, but this still remains the greatest Mock the Week moment... “For 3 million they could give everyone in Scotland a shovel, and we would dig a hole so deep we could hand her over to Satan personally"

[Stavros]

We will have to agree to disagree, Mock the Week is never going to set the tone for British politics, for which me must be grateful. Frankie Boyle, as indicated substitutes infantile vitriolic abuse for comedy, because the reality is that he just isn't funny. I am surprised you didn't resurrect his tasteless joke about disabled children, which sums up all you need to know about this pathetic loser.

[Laphroaig]

Fair enough, Frankie is very much a marmite character. However, that's the path he chose and he's now stuck in that niche. If he came out with a new show now called "Frankie Boyle, Nice Guy - The U-Turn Tour" noone would watch it.

[broncofan]

I had heard only a little bit about him before this article and got the sense that he was someone who has strong but superficial opinions. I also knew he had a history of insulting people as evidenced by his jokes about children with Down's syndrome.

If you read the article, it's clear that Boyle wants to make U.S. politicians and our institutions the butt of the joke rather than to use some of our shortcomings as a medium for humor. We are not supposed to be in on the joke.

Is Boyle inviting us to be self-deprecating and accept a joke at our expense or does he want us to say, "I guess we are buffoons thanks for pointing that out"? I think the latter, and so it's not an invitation I accept. I doubt Martin would be so magnanimous if the UK were spoken of with such uniform contempt.

It's interesting that a lot of comedians nowadays make jokes about very sensitive subjects. A comedian who makes jokes about children with Down's syndrome has to ask himself how he'd respond if confronted by the parents of an afflicted child. He might say that he's sorry he offended but it's only a joke...there are a hundred bad defenses but none is worse than what Frankie Boyle did actually say to the offended mother of a child with Down's syndrome at one of his shows. She told him she had a child with Down's syndrome and was offended by his jokes. He responded by saying, "but it's true isn't it?" That tells you all you need to know about him....a man who tries to get the mother of a child with down's syndrome to admit that his hateful jibes at her mentally disabled child are true.

[martin48]

Carson said he has felt the hand of God at several key moments in his life, including a dramatic near-miss traffic accident and receiving an A-grade on a chemistry exam for which he felt badly unprepared.

The most lasting miracle, though, was his sudden transformation from an angry, violent young man into the composed figure who stands before voters today.

He writes in "Gifted Hands" that his religious epiphany took place in the bathroom of his family's home in Detroit, after he says he had tried to kill a young friend over a dispute about what music to listen to on the radio. It was the last in a string of violent acts that Carson says were spurred by a roiling anger that threatened to derail his dream of becoming a doctor.

Crying, and praying to God for deliverance, Carson found his answer when he picked up a Bible and opened it to the book of Proverbs and a passage on the importance of controlling one's temper.
Carson writes in his book that he spoke directly to God in that moment: "Lord, despite what all the experts tell me, You can change me. You can free me forever from this destructive personality trait."
When he left that bathroom, he told voters at the September Commonwealth Club event in San Francisco, "I was a different person."


I thought “Yes, I can identify with this”. There are several times, no many times, I’ve come out of a bathroom feeling a different person. Sometimes, I’ve even felt a different person while in the bathroom. I don’t think God was involved, but if he was then he took on a most attractive form! Ah, those tits of his!!

[trish]

It's true. I spoke "directly" to God the other day and we gossiped a bit about Ben. God tells me Ben was a very confused teenager; confused about who he was, his importance relative to his fellow students and about the distinction between truth and fantasy. He was then much as he is today. So God is telling me that He vaguely remembers the time in the bathroom when Ben droned on and on muttering something about changing his 'personality traits' and then He laughs that Ben's egoistic, monotone, bullshit put Him into such a deep slumber that He only woke up years later to find that gay and women's studies have gotten a foothold in our schools and universities.

Oh BTW, according to my eternal friend, the pyramids indeed were grain elevators. The Egyptians discovered that when a Pharaoh dies his divinity begins to radiate away. A dead Pharaoh has a half-life of several hundred years. So they'd stick a dead Pharaoh in the middle of each pyramidal bin of grain. The divine rays kept the grain fresh. Moreover, if some of the radiated grain were replanted the plants would make their own herbicide, insecticide and produce larger and more numerous grains. Go figure.

[martin48]

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