Sunday, February 24, 2008

Unsafe At Any Spin

So Pumpkinhead hands his show over to Nader this morning to indulge the latter's increasingly malignant narcissism, and predictably folks run to the backyard to dig up their Ralph bone and gnaw on it for the week, which is about how long this will be remotely a news item.

I've rehashed this ad nauseam, but what the hell: Ralph's quest to theoretically heighten the contradictions had some validity in '96 and 2000, but no longer. All the cranky-old-man schtick that gets flung at McCain goes as well for Nader, who is 1½ years older than Straight Talk, but that's really the least of it. Nader did a decent job of maintaining reasonable gadfly viability in the nineties, but now seems to just pop out of his hole every four years to fuck with the process, and as his .38% showing in '04 proves, he can't even do that anymore.

It's just disappointing that Nader feels the need to be part of the circus he spent so many years decrying, because that's really all he's doing here. But in the political sense, if anything it's a boon -- he will probably galvanize the Democratic apparatchiks more forcefully in general, and perhaps they'll bank some of their Nader rage for, you know, Straight Talk McCain. And if the Republicans want to waste money funneling cash to front groups for Nader, let them.

No one's going to vote for Ralph this year, so again, people might want to get off their crosses and be aware that this time around, if Hillary or Obama cannot sufficiently draw serious distinctions between themselves and McCain (and there are plenty of genuine distinctions, don't get me wrong, but there are also plenty of retards who are unable to get that, which explains why so many more registered Democrats voted for Bush than for Nader in 2000), there won't be any protest vote to whine about for the next decade. People just won't bother.

That's the biggest untapped pool out there anyway -- the non-voters who refrain not because they're too stupid or lazy, but because they are frustrated with choosing between someone bought by the telecom lobby, and someone bought by the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies.

Maybe if the pelf were taken out of it, and the lobbyists and horse-race announcers were forced to find real work instead of contriving and milking a permanent campaign season, more people would feel like their government actually works for them, instead of around them. I think if there were a referendum for Russert and Tweety and the rest of the assorted weasels and loobyists to spend the rest of their lives asking us if we want fries with that, it would pass roughly 99-1%.

2 comments:

  1. Look at the bright side - the wild eyes and beards of foam and spittle make it easy to identify the idiots who are too fucking stupid to bother with. Think of all the time I would otherwise waste talking to them only to find out that they believe in the old pwoggie fable of Ralph being the talking snake who tricked the Donk into being ejected from the Garden! Thanksralph!

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  2. Ah yes, the quadrennial Gospel According to Thanksralph, chapter and verse. I've missed that interminable hymn, lo these many moons.

    Swing looooowwww, sweet idiot, comin' fo' to lecture my ass....

    [repeat until Holy Joe Lieberman finds it politically expedient to recant his prior apostasies, saying five hundred Our Clintons and Hail Alberts]

    I dunno. Nader at this point is to me like a band I used to like, but can no longer even pay attention to. I just can't muster the inchoate rage that is apparently required to continue being a registered Democrat (which is why I'm "decline to state", which is why it was a complete fucking pain in the ass to vote for Obama in the primary). He did some cool songs back in the day, but his recent shit sucks. You move on; there's other bands.

    His appearance on Russert is like hearing that Puddle of Mudd have a new CD coming out. I mean, who really gives a fuck? I liked She Fuckin' Hates Me, but like most of the world, I've moved on.

    But again, it'd be nice for the Thanksralph crowd to explain exactly where a fuckface like Lieberman would be in this equation of the dream alterahistory: where Gore actually managed to carry his fucking home state; where retards did not accidentally vote for Pat Buchanan; where 3 times as many registered Dems (in Florida) didn't intentionally vote for Dubya as they did for Nader; where Gore managed to sack the fuck up and fight for what was his, instead of letting a discount Yosemite Sam cocksucker like John Fucking Bolton and his Dockers cronies take it from him.

    Nader aside (and given his no-show in '04, he'll be aside with a quickness), it'll be interesting to see how folks square the inevitable ferocity and filth with which they are smeared by this year's swift-boaters, and how they fret at the injustice of it all. Must be Ralph's fault once again, somehow.

    It's not even knife-to-a-gunfight level slapstick, more like leaving the knife behind and bringing an ice cream cone. This energy is far better spent anywhere else. C'mon kidz, don't let Big Bad Ralph drink your milkshake.

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