People Who Will Never Be President - Chapter 5

Chapter 5 - "Jeb" Bush

 

First of all, look at the guy.

Jeb is Dubya without the glib, shallow pseudo-charisma.
Dubya was like the guy all the douchebag frat boys wanted to party with. Jeb is the guy they tolerated because Dubya asked them to do him a solid.

Second, the guy can't answer a simple question without stepping on his own dick. And then standing there wondering why his dick hurts.

Someone recently asked him about the minimum wage. He said there shouldn't be one. Which is the smart answer if you want the Republican nomination. "fuck those stupid people with jobs" always goes over big in Tea Town. But he couldn't just stop there. He had to keep saying more words until he looked like a moron.

At an event in South Carolina on Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush was asked whether he thinks the country should raise the minimum wage or whether the wage should be left up to private companies.
“We need to leave it to the private sector,” he responded.

 

Seriously, if you just stopped right there, you're golden. Just don't say any more words.

Buuuut you're gonna say more words, aren't ya?

“I think state minimum wages are fine.

Really?
You think wages need to be left up to the private sector, but also, state governments can set minimum wages and that's also fine? And you don't see the contradiction there? I guess you have to go through your checklist and tick off "private sector," "ststes' rights," "fuck the working class," and I guess you did accomplish that but, Jeezus do you even listen to yourself?

The federal government shouldn’t be doing this.” He went on, “The federal government doing this will make it harder and harder for the first rung of the ladder to be reached, particularly for young people, particularly for people that have less education.”

Yes, nothing is worse for the young people than making a halfway-decent wage!

Then he just dissolves into the patented Bush family gibberish.

“We’re moving to a world that is sticky in the ends, where it’s harder for people in poverty to move up and where the rich are doing really well and the middle is getting squeezed,” he said. “And any idea that makes, that perpetuates that is one that I would oppose, and I think this minimum wage idea is exactly one of those things.” He added that the people at the bottom “would be likely the ones that would lose their job. That’s how it’s always worked.”

Boy does that bring back memories!

When asked about laws that would allow business owners to discriminate against the gays or anyone else they find morally objectionable, but really the gays, he went straight into drivel mode:

“I don’t know about the law, but religious freedom is a serious issue, and it’s increasingly so, and I think people that act on their conscience shouldn’t be discriminated against, for sure,” Bush said. “There should be protections, and so, as it relates to marriage equality — and that may change, the Supreme Court may change that. That automatically then shifts the focus to people of conscience, and, I don’t know, have their faith make — they want to act on their faith, and may not be able to be employed for example.”

And lastly, when your main qualification for the office is that you are the son of a failed president and the brother of the most spectacular failure in history, it's a pretty good bet that you will never be President.

Bad Ads - Mountain Dew

Look, I understand that you're entering an over-crowded marketplace. The "energy drink" market is pretty saturated already with Red Bull, Monster, Rockstar, Nos, Amp, Full Throttle, etc. etc. etc. . . .  which are all pretty much the exact same thing with different made-up artificial flavors like "Khaos," "M-80" and "Bubbleberry." (Seriously, these are all actual names of energy drink flavors)

So it's tough to stand out. You have to come up with some kind of gimmick to set yourself apart from all the many many many other choices out there, and being "the one that tastes good" was going to take way too much effort, but this?




Your selling point here is, what? Your beverage gives you seizures? Then hallucinations? Boring, annoying, corny hallucinations? Wow, good luck with that!

Flashback Friday - The Wedding Present

I kind of lost track of The Wedding Present after their first couple albums which were so brilliant came out in the late 1980's, although we did see them at Slim's in San Francisco in, oh it must have been about '93 or '94. Hell of a show!

Anyway, please enjoy these selections from the albums Bizarro and George Best












And I have no idea how I originally heard about the "Ukranian Peel Sessions," But I somehow ended up with a 10" vinyl pressing of this album, in which the Wedding Present performs a selection of Ukranian folk songs in Ukranian.

People who will never be President Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Rick Santorum



First of all, the guy has zero charisma. Zero. He makes Jeb Bush look like George Clooney.

He looks like Seinfeld that time he got the bad haircut.




Plus, even for a party infected with  theocrats, Santorum is pretty far out there.

A lot of Republicans want the government to impose "Christian" values. Santorum wants them to be specifically hard-core Catholic values.

Rick Santorum Even Opposes Birth Control

Not only is he personally opposed to birth control, not only does he believe crazy things about the supposed "harm" that birth control supposedly does to users, but he thinks that states have the right to ban birth control - even though it is a matter of settled law that no, they can not.

Then there's this:

Rick Santorum Makes Stop At Gaffney Cookout

Frank fucking Gaffney held a dickhole convention and Santorum showed up.  (So did Ted Cruz, of course, but we needn't concern ourselves with him right now.)
Gaffney is so far beyond the pale, even the other nuts don't want anything to do with him:

CPAC Conservatives Shun “Crazy Bigot” Gaffney

Do you have any idea how awful you have to be to be too awful for CPAC? You could murder puppies on stage and as long as you said "Obama sucks" during the performance, you'd get an ovation from these cretins.

So there has to be some consequence to hobnobbing with a noxious racist like Frank Gaffney. You can't just go speak at a gathering hosted by this hate-monger and not suffer any kind of blowback. There has to be some downside to courting this kind of venomous lunacy.

Trust me. There is!

It just has to cost you votes to associate with a scumbag like Gaffney. Not in the primary, of course, but in the general election, something like this has to come back to bite you in the ass:

You can't listen to a psychotic spew this kind of bizarre bullshit and not push back at all.
This demented crackpot accused the President of not only the standard communist Kenyan dictator shit, but of actually trying to nuke an American city, and you don't have anything to say about that? Like, No, ma'am, that's incorrect?

Yeah, I wouldn't recommend that either.

But you do take offense at being lumped in with the other lawmakers because you're no longer a sitting Senator? And never will be again? Or any other type of officeholder? Ever again?  And specifically, will never ever be President?

People Who Will Never be President, Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Louisiana Governor Piyush "Bobby" "Bubba" Jindal.



One would have thought that after the State of the Union fiasco Jindal would no longer be considered even a dark-horse candidate, but there does seem to be at least the possibility of presidential run in his future, even if it is just a Gingrich/Cain book deal kind of run. Which for his sake, I hope it is because there is no way in Hell that Bobby Jindal will ever be President.

First of all, no matter what they may say to pollsters, the Republican base is not about to hand the keys to the White House to a guy whose family tree doesn't have it roots in Western Europe.

You can whitewash the portrait all you want, "Bubba."

Secondly, can you imagine this feeble little milquetoast in a debate against the Republican flamethrowers? Chris Christie's walking out of there with Jindal's lunch money.

And then there's the way he runs an economy:

Louisiana governor: Sell tobacco settlement for upfront cash

Wow. It's the J.G. Wentworth approach to macroeconomics. What's plan B, a payday loan? Auto pawn?
Maybe just buy some time until the check comes in from that Nigerian prince?
Gawd!  What are you, running the state out of a trailer park?

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration moved ahead Tuesday with a plan to sell the state's remaining share of a massive tobacco settlement, despite criticism the move would waste a valuable asset for a quick fix to budget problems.

A board that oversees the settlement agreed to the idea, though several more approvals would be needed before any sale. Treasurer John Kennedy objected, saying Jindal's plan is driven by desperation to find money for a budget awash in red ink.

 

Red ink, huh? You know, there's a thing that you can do to get money, um. . . what's it called? It rhymes with "snacks." Um, oh yeah, tax! You could maybe have some sort of a tax, then you'd have monies to pay for things. 

 As the Republican governor has stuck to a pledge against raising taxes, Jindal and lawmakers have refused to match the state's spending to its yearly revenue. They have plugged budget holes with short-term financing like money from property sales, legal settlements and trust funds, creating continued shortfalls year after year.

Ah, the party of fiscal responsibility! All you have to do is sell off like a billion dollars worth of property each year, and then, um. . . 

  

Step Three: Profit!

 Well, you know Republicans are always saying they'd run the country like a business, and Jindal is running his state like a CEO who knows he won't be around in a year when it all hits the fan.

Kennedy, also a Republican, called the tobacco settlement plan more of the same maneuvering, as the state faces a $1.6 billion budget gap next year.

 Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols said the Jindal proposal doesn't involve a one-year cash infusion, but $750 million that could be spent over eight years

 Oh! Well, why didn't you say so? The $750 million isn't just getting thrown at the billion-dollar shortfall, that would be silly! It's spread out over 8 years, so it's only about 100 million to offset the on and a half billion. . . wait, how is that better?

 Louisiana is one of many states that settled lawsuits for claims of smokers' deaths and health costs against tobacco companies in 1998 in return for installments of money each year. The annual payments extend as long as the companies involved in the settlement are viable.

So, you would be getting money from this settlement for infinity years? That's what you're selling off? An infinity-year annual payment?  Who would sell that? I mean, unless you're getting magic beans in return - wait, are you getting magic beans?

 No, wait. Wrong fairy tale. You're killing the golden goose.

The state sold 60 percent of its settlement to investors for $1.2 billion in 2001, rather than risk tobacco companies going belly-up later and not making their settlement payments.

  

Really? You're the second Louisiana governor to think this was a good idea?

 The Jindal administration proposal to sell the remaining 40 percent would be structured differently. It would spend all the dollars that are received over seven to eight years — eliminating the yearly $55 million revenue stream after that, until the bond debt is paid.

Oy.

Thank God Bobby Jindal will never be President!