December 12, 2011 -- The Republican debates leading up to the caucuses which will select the party’s presidential nominee are kind of like a medieval contest wherein suitors of the hand of the princess must undergo a series of demanding challengers to see which is worthy of the reward. Slay the dragon. Pull the sword out of the rock. Recover the lost sacred relic.
Depending upon the hosts of these events they have been challenged to prove how conservative they are, how religious they are, how homophobic they are, how much do they know about geography, how much they love Israel, how much they hate Obama, and last Saturday night how ready they are for prime time under the guidance of ABC’s Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos from Drake University in Iowa. It was sort of a “do any of them look presidential, as if they were speaking at a press conference at the White House?” kind of thing. Pause and dwell on that for a moment. And then realize that one of them might very well be called upon to do just that a little over a year from now.
I have my own opinions. Rick Perry looks like a guy who is fumbling his lines as he is up there to introduce the guest speaker; Mitt Romney seems agitated and impatient with being questioned; Santorum as though his feelings are hurt because people do not seem to love him as they used to in Pennsylvania; Newt Gingrich just stands above it all looking down on the witless throngs; Ron Paul the Andy Rooney of the field; and Michelle Bachmann as if addressing a meeting of the PTA on the bad behavior of the children in the playground. I find it difficult to envision any one of them speaking to the nation from the White House. It’s like sticking a finger in my mind’s eye.
What did we learn Saturday night? Rick Perry did not have a bathroom to potty in until he was five years old; when Mitt Romney thinks he is right he is quick to bet, not a fiver or a twenty, but a casual ten grand as though all he has to do is reach in his pocket for the big roll held by a rubber band; Ron Paul’s wife worked to put him through medical school; Rick Santorum waxes nostalgia for Pennsylvania, and in a bid that smacked of asking to be consider a choice for VP in a Gingrich administration said early in his career Newt Gingrich was his inspiration; Michelle Bachmann brought us up to date on the “hate the Jews” rhetoric of Palestinian school books; while Gingrich had to stave off accusations that he would treat Israelites in a manner akin to he would treat grade school children over here by having them clean the school bathrooms.
One commentator immediately after the event said that in general it seemed low in testosterone although I thought the feisty Mrs. Bachmann held up her end. It still looks like the two man race that polls indicate, either Mitt or Newt (the best order to list them for as it came up on the popular NPR program “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me…” to say Newt-or-Romney is a little indelicate).
We’ll Know You By The Company You Keep
Earlier this week you would have heard cries of anguish had you been anywhere near me when I read that Newt Gingrich said that as President he would want to make the strangely mustached John Bolton his Secretary of State. To recommend Bolton for that position would evoke the same reaction Republicans would have if a Democratic President recommended Barney Frank to head the Federal Reserve.
To refresh our memory Bolton, the man George W. Bush asked to represent us at the United Nations, wanted to get rid of the United Nations. It was a recess appointment since there was no way Bush could have gotten him confirmed by the Senate; Bolton resigned when his temporary term was up, but he was there long enough to tick off many of the other members. Rude. Undiplomatic, they said.
Bolton did not hesitate to equate diplomacy with weakness and indecisiveness. He said: “There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the United States.”
Bolton, a lawyer, has been around for a long time in government service, always so far to the right in danger of falling off the edge. He was one time protégé of Jesse Helms, helped prepare Antonin Gregory Scalia prep for his confirmation to the Supreme Court, was involved in the Iran Contra affair, was an early and vocal advocate of taking out Saddam Hussein while Clinton was President, has been called one of the architects of the Iraq war. Good Lord, Secretary of State? You are a strange person indeed, Newt Gingrich. Did you make that announcement, which may have been in violation of a law on the books to prevent such premature selections, because among many other positions Bolton serves on the Jewish Institute for National Security? Carl Ford former State Department intelligence chief calls him a “kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy”, implying that he was always ready to please whoever had authority over him, while having very little regard for people working under him. A Secretary of State is a diplomat. Of course you could hardly call Gingrich a diplomatic kind of person either so it makes sense he would pick another bully to bully the rest of the world.
Sandra Somashekhar of the Washington Post reports Gingrich is “crazy for zoos” as he visits one in Iowa. Of course he is. He loves the Republican Party doesn’t he?
And this from Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post: “You don’t get more un-Romney than Gingrich. Imperfect and untidy, he’s the serial husband with whom anyone could feel comfortable sharing a beer. Or a keg. A sinner like the rest of us, he’s as familiar and comfortable as an old sofa.” She quotes a former colleague who remains anonymous: “He’s unstable, and everybody knows it, but no one wants to say it. Yes, he’s a genius and is respected for his many great ideas. But he’s Icarus. He flies too close to the sun.” It seems “erratic behavior and his inability to resist the sound of his own voice” (Parker) is now going over well on the campaign trail.
Ryan Plan to End Medicare Fully Endorsed by Romney
And what company does Romney keep? Paul Ryan for one. And endorses the Ryan plan to end Medicare as we know it, turning it into a voucher system that shifts health care costs away from the government “onto the backs of seniors” (Progress Report) and doubles seniors’ out of pocket health care costs.
Also in Mr. Romney’s camp is Glenn Hubbard, who from 2001 to 2003 was chairman of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Adviser. We can thin Hubbard for those wonderful “temporary” Bush tax cuts under his aegis which goosed the budget from a modest surplus to the mega deficit we have today. He stands at Mitt’s side ready to do it again. Whoopee.
Which Man Do You Choose?
NYT columnist David Brooks, from the right: “Romney, who seems to have walked straight out of the 1950s, and another, Gingrich, who seems to have walked straight out of the 1960s.”
Commentator James Moore: “Newt might scare them with his pseudo-intellect and his multiple wives and his millions of dollars made off of being a lobbyist for the guys who caused the mortgage and Wall Street collapse.”
Paul Krugman from the left: “Mr. Romney’s strategy, in short, is to pretend that he shares the ignorance and misconceptions of the Republican base. He isn’t a stupid man — but he seems to play one on TV … the only way to actually believe the modern G.O.P. catechism is to be completely clueless. Newt: by no means the deep thinker he imagines himself to be, but he’s a glib speaker …”
Not what a crowd, what a crowd, but What a choice, What a choice.
Was it something I said …
A young member of my household began reading the newspaper at an early age and one day came across an item in “Believe It or Not” that stated there were 14 million bats in Carlsbad Caverns or some such number. “Who counted them?” she demanded. Keeping that in mind I am informed there are 988,968 words in the English language, many more ways to convey meaning verbally than any other language, going away. We commonly use a few more than two thousand, but we get to choose which two thousand.
Then along came texting with acronyms, like “I Y Q” and its response “I Y Q 2.” The verbal words go digital. My granddaughter has been texting for years, rarely talks on the cell phone which she rarely answers, but her fingers are always flying over her smart phone even when she is doing something else.
Then came Twitter and Tweets. Communications reduced to 140 characters making use of acronyms even more desirable. The Library of Congress estimated 140 million tweets are sent every day, collections of trivia and drivel. The library has made a deal to archive every one of those tweets but as a guy who had trouble looking up numbers in the old telephone directories I don’t see the good of it.
Now there is something entirely new. Texting, even with acronyms is too much bother so here comes Emoji, a collection of whimsical little icons that express meaning and take the place of “emotions,” those combinations of parentheses and other punctuation that people use to drop a facial expression into a text message or e-mail. So if you want to invite a friend to get together for a drink you make on click on an icon of two clinking beer mugs. Saves so much time and bother and replaces actual words. A vocabulary of icons has been developed and an app has been created. It is in its infancy, but just wait a minute or two. Will people write stories and books in emoji? Will the world grow ever more silent?
It is like a return to the past. Thirty to forty-five thousand years ago early humans drew pictures on walls of caves. The Egyptians developed hieroglyphic script (and in the elections this week used over 240 symbols on their 60 ft. long paper ballot). The Mayan had glyphs, about 550 logograms (which represent whole words) and 150 syllabograms (which represent syllables). And of course Asians came up with the stylized versions of stick drawings.
So we are making a move to revert to earlier means of communications, as in silence as we take away the language. There is a new movie out that is completely silent, a tribute to the old silent movie days, that is getting much rave critical attention, “The Artist.” Maureen Dowd wrote an interesting rave review in the New York Times, quoting the movie’s creator Michel Hazanavicius, “I compare it to the zero in mathematics. People think it’s nothing, but actually it’s not. It can be very powerful.”
So if we go back to communicating with icons we will each need a personal one to represent our own name to go along with the vocabulary in the app. I can see Mitt Romney with a stylized car with a dog strapped to the roof. Newt Gingrich with a head of carefully coifed white hair imposed on a field of sparkling jewels. Rick Perry’s icon could feature his boots which read “come and take it” on both right and … does he own a left anything? Even a boot? Jon Huntsman, two hands holding a fertilized human egg. Ron Paul a partial globe containing only a map of the United States. Michele Bachmann the old symbol for coupling, the two key-like figures connected by circles connected at the top but the end of each would be pointed symbolizing same [sex uniting, all covered with a big red X].
For my signature a Word Cloud of one of an old Trivia piece might do. The one I have shows the biggest usage is the word “word” since if nothing else, I seem to be all to full of words. Full of it. But I don’t have to tell anyone how knows me that.
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