This is the Romney Bot 10000 or what Mitt Looks Like with the Makeup Removed...Is it too early to point out that Romney's big win of barely meeting expectations in Iowa and New Hampshire have netted him a total of 6 possible delegates. ( The Iowa delegates can actually do any goddamn thing they want to do...they're not bound to the candidate at all. So it's about 6, +/- human nature? Or have two small to medium somewhat oddball places solved the problem of democracy? Who the hell knows? But the media seems to see Romney as a jaugernaut just chewing up the terrain in a Harvard Business School Blitzkrieg. Yeah...Well, things can happen, if we let them...
There is a marvelous article online at the Economist that makes a really simple suggestion -- stop worrying about the dogfight in the Republican party and pay attention to and force Romney to say in simple declarative sentences what it is that he intends to do as president. Since I personally think he is absolutely clueless as to what he wants to do in general, I suspect that it could be a far more enlightening exercise than wondering about how Newt Gingrich can paint himself as the populist opposing a malefactor of great wealth. Won't happen, but it is an interesting idea...
But then, so is this. They're making a porn parody of Star Wars... I'm wondering how this will impact the world of nerds, nutcases and plain old fashioned strange people who obsess about it. Some of these folks are exceptionally smart; some are exceptionally strange; some of them, as Leonard says of Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory, " one lab accident away from being a super-villain." Most are harmless, since the whole Star Wars/trek/thor/comic book thing is a way of handling their subliminated and frustrated sexuality and drive for power in a world that really doesn't fit them. (Note how easy it is to unintentionally pull the chain, so to speak, when writing about porn.) Given the whole Mormon, holy underwear thing that Romney has going against him, it's possible he might be able to inspire some of these folks...but, probably not, since he doesn't really seem to see himself as and that whole Master of the Universe -Venture Capitalist thing leads to something rather different indeed....
THE ROMNEY BOT HAS A RADICALLY DIFFERENT SELF IMAGE AND DREAM IN HIS ELECTRIC SLEEP!
Since Porno films today tend to go straight -- wouldn't a Star Wars porn film need a lot of homosexual overtones, undertones and so on?--to video anyway, we'll probably be spared a raft of stories about nerves flogging the old dolphin in theatres...or, maybe not.
THIS IS ROMNEY BOT BETA VERSION!
On a vaguely related note, Hostess Bakery is filing for
Chapter 11, again. What is Mitt Romney going to do to save the Twinkie? (Actually, this kind of ties into the Star Wars porn thing, if you think about it...and, has anyone noticed how much Mitt actually resembles Max Headroom?) Let the market take it's course? But, what will Karl Rove and Grover Norquist wash down with their bottles of virgin blood and Dr Pepper as they plot the destruction of the social welfare net and the ability of the poor to afford toilet paper while the Koch Bros industies destroy the environment making it impossible to obtain leaves, corn cobs and so on for use in lieu of...)
It's really not fair for me to pick on Romney for being an artifical, androidal rich bastard replicant who has devoted a life to strange cults and oddities like Capitalism and Joseph Smith. Granted, their religious ideology at it's basis is sufficient to make Scientology seem at least companionable and the 72 Virgins thing seem a reasonable alternative. Hell, Catholicism and Buddhism and Unitarianism and any religion has a lot of oddities. I was reading -- finally, I've been inspired by the hype and the Swedish versions of the movies -- to read The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo and was kind of amazed to find out the importance of the Apocrophya to motivation behind various characters. Not as amazed at Calle and Lisabeth, but then, they were kind of sucked into this madness by that point. For the none theologically minded, the Apocrophya are the books that the Jews left out of what became the Old Testament but that survived and continue to influence thinking on these issues. Not unlike the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic gospels...except maybe weirder. Now, religion does odd things. It can do wonderful things, but when you get into all that messy miracle, divine, intervention, afterlife shit, things get strange. Unfortunately, it's difficult to not take that stuff seriously when you're dealing with people who take two years of their lives out to prostelytze and annoy. (Being accosted by American Mormons on McConnell Street in Dublin was an excellent excuse many years ago for some Bushmill's in the coffee...for the next decade!) They believe this stuff... Rick Santorum scares me and his madness is something I grew up with...Pat Buchanan scares me, and his madness is something I actually can relate to quite well...
But, we should really follow the whole Romney thing not as a personal thing -- although it is worthwhile from a satirical point of view to do so and I'm all for satire -- but from a hard policy point of view. Governor, what exactly do you propose to do about -- jobs? And then follow-up -- there is a rule of thumb in interrogation, quality and so on. There is a significantly limited number of questions about anything that someone who may want to dissemble or is stuck in some ideological world view that they can answer without inadvertently discovering the truth of their beliefs or revealing their lie.
"Yo, Mitt-face, what are you going to do about the Middle East?
"I'm going to put troops back into Iraq, take down the Mullahs in Iran, and support Zion...err...Israel. Yeah, Israel, that's the place.
"So, you're going to re-invade Iraq?
"They'll welcome us with open arms to protect them from al Quieda and the Sunnis and the Shi'ites and the Kurds and the Iranians!
"Sure about that? They told us to leave, you know because we wouldn't agree to their idea of a status of forces agreement. Do you want American soldiers subject to Iraqi criminal justice?
"Nobody wants that."
"Well, that was what the Iraqis wanted to have us stay."
"I'd use more diplomacy..."
"Yeah, ok, now Iran...How are you going to take down the Mullahs? Are you going to invade? Bomb? Use Nuclear missiles? Pray a lot? Keep using sanctions?"
"That's more than one question."
"Not so much questions as a precis of your options to take down the Mullahs? Maybe diplomacy? And, what gives us the right to impose regieme change again?"
"The people of Iran want to be free!"
"Just like in Iraq?"
The problem with the Romney-bot beta version was that it was toooooo smart. Kerry had actually thought about these things. Romney hasn't...and it shows. As Molly Ivins said, and we really miss her and need more people like her and pretty goddamn soon! "Nothin' but good times ahead."
Mr Romney has something that the president and his Republican rivals sorely lack: business experience. For 25 years he made himself and the management consultancies BCG and Bain a lot of money by making companies more efficient which, yes, sometimes means firing people, but also drives economic growth. … [C]reative destruction … is the essence of capitalism itself.
Posted by: garage equipment | 22 January 2012 at 07:37 AM
Yeah, it worked so well and made Austria such a powerhouse. Fuck off and die, Paultard.
We are not a semi-feudal country like the Osterreich of Von Mieses and Schumpeter. Creative destruction is largely about changes in technology and the use of monetary policy to maintain progress. While not socialist, Schumpeter was conscious that if disparity got too great, the capitalist system was in trouble. And, of course, I find it amusing that Von Mieses and Schumpeter ended up relying on handouts from the American uberrich. I respect their thought, but in the same way that I respect Aquinas. Not quite complete...
Posted by: Crusader AXE | 22 January 2012 at 07:57 PM