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Cristina’s Bulldog

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You Know When You’ve Been Dissed by Aníbal!

You Know When You’ve Been Dissed by Aníbal!

Aníbal Domingo Fernández fills a useful slot in the Argentinian Government. Officially, he is Chief of the Cabinet of Ministers of Argentina. Unofficially, whenever the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (no relation) comes under attack, Aníbal is there gesticulating and coining subtly deprecatory phrases that makes the opposition wonder whether and how much they were just dissed.

Could you imagine someone on Obama’s staff who is there to counterattack whenever Ted Cruz or Rush Limbaugh or Louis Gohmert lets loose one of their smellies, and not only counterattack but make the perpetrator uncomfortably check to see whether his zipper is in the approved upright position.

When there was a scandal regarding infant malnutrition in the city of Tucumán, he is known to have said the problem was caused by “a sick society and a ruling class that are sons of bitches, all of them.” Imagine what Aníbal would say about Fox News when he called Buenos Aires TV host Mirtha Legrand “uneducated, rude, ignorant” and claimed that she “says stupid things.”

In January 2019, he called economist Martin Redrado a “fool” and “freak” who “thinks he is the center of the world and fails to show respect for Argentinians.”

Yes, I think Obama should hire him.

A New Mascot for the GOP

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Don’t You Think It’s Appropriate?

Don’t You Think It’s Appropriate?

This is reprinted from a January 2012 posting to the late Multiply.Com:

While the donkey is not a bad mascot for the Democrats, I never thought of the elephant as the truest representation for the GOP. Elephants are actually fairly intelligent: Their brains are larger than those of any other land mammal. And whale brains, though they could be larger, are still smaller proportionately to the elephant’s brain. A whale twenty times as big an as elephant still has a brain that is only twice as large as the pachyderm’s. What is more, elephant brains are strikingly similar to human brains in structure and complexity.

No, what I propose for the Republicans as a symbol is the rhinoceros. Their thick hides do not allow facts to penetrate, and they are likely to launch an attack for no good reason at all. The rhino pictured above is from a 1550 German document and looks ideal for the party of Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rich Santorum, and Ron Paul.

What is the rhino’s message? “We don’t like your looks; we don’t care about what you have to say; and we are going to attack your ass until it’s hyena chow.”

Also, it is appropriate that the word rhino is British slang for money; and we all know the GOP is the party that stands for big money. (It’s interesting how that came into the language: rhino- is the Greek root for nose, and the word has come to mean cash money for paying through the nose.)

Nattering Nabobs of Negativism

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It Seems That Most Politics Is Driven by Hate

It Seems That Most Politics Is Driven by Hate

The phrase is from the late Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, referring to the news media. I think, however, in today’s poisonous climate, it refers to most populist politics. According to an article in the current edition of The New Scientist entitled “We Are What We Vote,” we find the following paragraph:

Research in the past few years using information on brain structure and function from MRI scans, psychological responses, eye-trackers and behavioural genetics, shows that individual political orientations are deeply connected to biological forces that are usually beyond personal control…. Despite initial incredulity—people like to believe political opinions are rational responses to salient events—the evidence that political preferences are linked to systems that often involve subconscious is growing. An admittedly simplistic but useful summary of this research is that human emotions are grounded in biology, and politics is grounded in emotions.

If you are left-leaning, a look at Raw Story or Salon.Com will send your blood boiling based on what such fear totems as Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh are saying. If, on the other hand, your news source of preference is The Drudge Report or RedState.Com, you will find articles bemoaning attacks on liberty, gun ownership, and fundamentalist religion. The intention is generally to make you feel outrage and hatred.

For each article by a reasonable commentator, there are typically half a dozen or more pieces excoriating “the enemy.” If it is hard to get away from knee-jerk reactions, it is partly because, amid all the clickbaiting, there are all too many examples in the mainstream media.

There is even an entire news network dedicated to fear and outrage. Do I have to name it, or can you guess?

The Stale Language of Protest

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This Is What It’s Usually About

This Is What It’s Usually About

Every so often, I feel that a particular mode of behavior has run its course. I think it’s time for a paradigm shift (perhaps that expression has run its course as well) in the art of protest. Turn on any news program, and you are sure to see a group of people carrying placards and usually moving around in a circle chanting very stale slogans. Typically, a newsman will hold a microphone and camera up to one of the most inarticulate of the protesters and ask them why he or she is picketing. After a few hems and haws, the protester will say that so and so is unfair or unjust or dangerous or just irksome as all get-out.

Now it is possible that all ten people who think like the protester are with him marching around and chanting. It is indeed probable that the viewpoint being expressed is not only in the minority, but a statistically insignificant sliver of the total population. In our era of “fair and balanced” news reporting, we are eager to seek out these minority viewpoints and make as much hay with them as possible. Think of these boring protests as a boon to news organizations, particularly on a slow news day.

I am always for more ingenuity. If one’s point of view is to be effectively conveyed, I say do something that people will remember. Let me cite a classic example. An Argentinian condom manufacturer who was also a big soccer fan published the following graphic before a match with Brazil:

PICBA1

I will not try to explain exactly what is happening here because—well, if you don’t know, you probably haven’t reached the age of puberty yet. Needless to say, the B stands for Brazil and the A for Argentina. This did not sit well with the Brazilian soccer fans. When their team pasted the Argentinians, they rubbed it in by publishing an even funnier graphic:

PICBA2

I will always remember this as perhaps the most inventive act of protest I have ever seen.

The next time you feel like taking to the streets with your message, try something different. Think of the streets as a form of theater. And start from there.

(This is a re-posting of one of my 2009 entries from Blog.Com.)

Time to Climb Off the Carousel

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Liberal, Libertarian, Conservative—Just Going Round in Circles

Liberal, Libertarian, Conservative—Just Going Round in Circles

You’ve probably learned by now that political labels in American politics are primarily for assigning blame, whether due or not. That’s why I decided to not to write any more outrage pieces on my blog site. It was too easy to react to stupid things the other side was saying.

Oh, I’m still a Democrat, but as my hero Will Rogers once said: “I am not a member of any organized party—I am a Democrat.” But I do not accept phone calls from any political party. And I’ve contacted the Democratic fund raisers who were bombarding my e-mail to stop it. Of course, Republicans and Libertarians know better than to try to contact me for any reason. I have my doubts about Democrats (a.k.a. The Circular Firing Squad), but I like the other guys even less. I figure that if Faux News has something good to say about anybody, they’re probably a serial child molester and would-be tyrant.

Do I consider myself a Liberal? Not really. Fiscally, I’m a bit on the Conservative side. My goal is not to see the Federal, State, and Local governments all spend themselves into bankruptcy; but I think that we can’t neglect the poor, the way that many troglodyte Conservatives advocate.

All the political labels have resulted only in a lot of Americans hating one another solely for their stated political affiliation. I’d prefer to judge people on the way they act.

 

Our Ratty Old Constitution

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How Can These Bewigged Lawyers and Farmers Understand What We Have Become?

How Can These Bewigged Lawyers and Farmers Understand What We Have Become?

Oh, I have nothing against the Constitution per se. Except it was just peachy for a rural slave-owning society. It always amuses me that certain people who don’t profess to read anything but their Bibles have suddenly started sporting tricorne hats and taking on the appearance of the men in knee-breeches in the above patriotic painting.

The delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 could not have imagined what was to follow: Manifest Destiny. The Civil War. Immigration. Two World Wars bracketed on either side of a global Depression. The atomic bomb. The Cold War. Global warming. A completely deadlocked congress.

Our Founding Fathers did not trust the people, so they opted for a form of representational government in which there were “buffers” between the rabble (that’s us) and power. The States forming the Union were all important—particularly in the U.S. Senate, where Wyoming’s 0.5 million people has as much political power as California’s 38 million. Now I like Wyoming a lot, but for all us Californians to have to kowtow to a mere handful of them cowboys is a bit of a stretch to me.

The whole system of checks and balances was a brilliant invention, but when a majority of ultra-conservative Supreme Court justices appointed by past Republican presidents can make their own law in the face of the will of the people, the result is chaos. Now corporations are being treated as people, and money rules supreme in elections (cf. Citizens United).

There are a number of ways that things could have gone, but they didn’t. The political stasis of the last decade will be how this era will be remembered. Look at the faces in the news: You can start drawing mustaches on them, because they will be the villains of the future.

In the meantime, all we can do is try to keep the ship afloat while the Three Stooges pound holes in the keel so that the water coming in can flow out easier.

 

It’s Not Just About Fundraising

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It’s a Backbone! That’s What It Is!

It’s a Backbone! That’s What It Is!

This evening I hung up on a robocall from Debbie Wasserman Schultz, U.S. Democratic Representative from Florida—presumably in a failed attempt to get me to donate to the Democrats’ circular firing squad. I hang up on her a lot these days.

Before I ever give them a penny again, I have to be convinced the Democrats are something more than a perpetual fundraising machine gone out of control. If they want money, Democrats have to stand for something other than merely not being Republicans. I know that the Tea Party and their Republican fellow travelers are obnoxious in the extreme. But, really, what do the Democrats stand for other than being elected or re-elected?

I want to support politicians that will fight for me—not merely to accumulate funds so that they can buy up scads of TV ad time for next year’s elections, and robocall and e-mail me a few thousand times more in the months to come.

If the Democrats somehow find their backbone, I’ll be glad to give them my support. But the stumblebums of 2014? They can go to hell.

 

 

Who Wants To Be President?

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I Can’t Think of Any Advantages, Can You?

I Can’t Think of Any Advantages, Can You?

The above picture of a standee of Mitt Romney after his 2012 electoral debacle pretty much sums up for me the joys and sorrows of being the President of the United States.

I remember while growing up people asking me if I wanted to be President. While I was immensely flattered at the time, now I think the presidency is a booby prize, similar to being one of those carnival sideshow attractions in which people throw pies at your face or a ball that dunks you into a tank. This country is so evenly divided between the two political parties that you are guaranteed of being hated by millions of people, many of whom would like to see you impeached, assassinated, or at the very least publicly humiliated.

The only U.S. President in recent times to have been liked by more than 50.1% of the population was Ronald Reagan, and then even he came in for a forest of brickbats toward the end of his second term when it appeared that his memory was fading. I was actually at the Reagan Presidential Library when Ronnie died. A newsman pushed a microphone into my face and asked me what I thought his legacy would be. I answered: “I didn’t care much for him as President, but he was a good communicator.” Of course, that never made it into any news program.

I can see why Hillary Clinton may decide not to run in 2016: She would be roundly hated by millions. She saw that whole Kenneth Starr impeachment charade over her husband’s peccadilloes, not to mention that whole Whitewater fracas. And there were some who wanted to frame her for the “murder” of Vince Foster in 1993.

Would I run for President? I would—but only if I could have right-wing pundits executed at will and senate and house members arrested for being too obstreperous. And what are the chances of that ever happening?

 

A Modest Proposal

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Does the IRS Want to Make More Money? Try This!

Does the IRS Want to Make More Money? Try This!

We all know that corporations are taxed based on their annual profit. Yet this profit can be endlessly manipulated using depreciation and a whole plethora of loopholes. As one who has been in the accounting profession for a few years, I have a modest proposal that could at one and the same time:

  • Increase corporate taxes and
  • Limit the pay of ravenous CEOs and other management

It’s really quite simple: No company can pay a tax that is lower than the amount of compensation (in cash or stock options) paid to its management. The management positions which trigger this tax policy can (and will) be negotiated endlessly, but the upshot will be higher corporate taxes and less outrageous sums going to overpaid CEOs and their henchmen.

Why should corporate rights be so much more generous than the rights of American workers?

 

 

The Republic of Fear

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So You Really Think You’re Going to Catch Ebola?

So You Really Think You’re Going to Catch Ebola? I Wouldn’t Bet on It!

The news is all about fear. Fear sells. People keep coming back for more because their fear builds until it warps their decision-making process. The various news channels cannot sell soap unless they put you in a fearful state of mind. One of the reasons I do not watch the news on television—ever—is that I have no wish to be manipulated.

I am going to ask myself several questions just to give you my take on several issues in the news:

  1. Am I afraid of contracting ebola? Not at all. The only thing I might do if I have to fly somewhere while this outbreak lasts is to wear gloves and a surgical face mask during the duration of the flight.
  2. Do I think that ISIS (or ISIL or whatever) will try something in our country? Probably. We are trying to bomb them to pieces and that probably doesn’t sit too well with them, so I expect they’ll try something along the lines of our own domestic terrorists with bombs or other devices. Am I afraid of them? Not particularly. I think they’re enjoying a brief ascendancy in Syria and Iraq before even the Sunnis try to shut them down.
  3. Are My Children Going to Be Shot Dead by Crazed Gunmen? As I don’t have any children, the fear is somewhat remote for me. But are your children going to be shot dead by crazed gunmen? That is a distinct possibility, as we are doing nothing to keep guns out of the hands of homicidal idiots.
  4. Are Weird Storms Going to Level Our Cities and Towns? Oh, you can bet on it. Curiously, most of these storms occur in areas where people disbelieve that we can affect climate change. “Nice, nice, very nice, so many people in the same device.” (Read Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle to understand the quote.)

At least once a year, I quote the Bene Gesserit litany from Frank Herbert‘s Dune on the subject of fear:

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

So before you switch on Faux News, you might want to think twice. Don’t believe what various pundits and experts try to tell you. Occasionally they tell the truth, but only on the sixth Friday of every month. Even the newspaper can discombobulate you. Be skeptical. Be very skeptical. People make lots of money by trying to lie to you. Don’t let them get away with it.

Practice living fearlessly. I went to Peru on my lonesome and spent three weeks traveling among people who did not speak the same language as me or think the way I think. It’s good practice, actually.