Do read Draft Jeb! by Charles Pierce. Then come back here.
Jeb — ‘scuse me, Jeb! — actually scares me more than the clowns currently running. Yeah, he’s as corrupt and hypocritical as the rest of the bushies, but he cleans up well. Unlike the other presidential hopefuls, he doesn’t have visible bats flying around his head.
Also unlike the current candidates, he would enjoy the benefit of the unified GOP establishment and its propaganda machine. Americans will hear nothing but what a great guy he is. The biggest challenge to his campaign will be keeping little brother George locked in a basement until after the election.
Wow! What a read that was. I am so sick of this free-market bull shit. Free-marketeers would have us believe that a puppet show plays without a puppeteer. I am so sick of the prep-school types believing that they hit a triple when they were actually born on third-base. I am so sick of chicken-shit hawks who’ve never been to war, never experienced the horrors of the battlefield, gone to extraordinary lengths, in fact, to avoid putting their bodies where their mouths are, but are so willing to send other people to do their dirty work.
Back to Jeb. I’m going to Google brother Marvin who generally flies under the public radar as he wheels-and-deals for profit and, if I remember correctly is equally as crooked as he male siblings.
an S&L swindler who later went on to a career of being surprised when Thai hookers showed up unannounced at his hotel room door
got drunk and challenged the Auld Fella to a fistfight
zombie-eyed granny starver Paul Ryan
here comes Jeb (!), declaring that wealthy individuals are being “punished with ruinous taxation.”
Oh thank you, Santa. Now please pitch that as a miniseries to Comedy Central.
“Yeah, he’s as corrupt and hypocritical as the rest of the bushies, but he cleans up well”
Yeah he appears a liitle more centered than GW. I think he could lock up florida and steal enough of the hispanic vote elsewhere to give President Obama a real challange. Though I think little boots so f-ed things up that he would have a hard time with moderates, hopefully we won’t find out ever.
Steve M has an interesting take on Jeb writing that Op-ed piece as a precursor to being at the top of AE’s (Americans Elect) 3rd party ticket.
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/
Apparently Rachel came to that conclusion as well.
I have some reservations about that, which I write about in my comment there.
As for Mr. Pierce – I just finished his book, “Idiot America,” and can’t recommend reading anything more highly!
I think he’s the funniest political writer since Hunter S. Thompson at his zenith. And that includes Matt Taibbi, who is certainly no slouch either when it comes to making me ROTHALMAO.
Felicity,
There never has been, and never will be, a non-crooked Bush.
And as for being smarter than George, which is not difficult – ask any sea anemone, which could more clearly express itself than Little Boots, that doesn’t mean he won’t be dangerous to this country and the world. There’s still a Bush sneer behind Jeb’s smile. And remember, he is married to an Hispanic woman, so that will help him if/when he decides to run.
The Bush’s are a dangerous, un-American family. And we won’t be rid of them anytime soon, based on the stable of young politico’s they’re raising.
I don’t know, I suppose some of the Republican candidates (actual or potential) are more superficially plausible than others, and Jeb would be one of the more superficially plausible ones. But whoever wins the nomination is going to be stuck with this completely deranged agenda that’s all about raising taxes on working people rather than on our benevolent overlords, the Job Creators. The American people have shown truly stupendous levels of gullibility over the years, but there has to be a limit somewhere. I would say that a party that is more or less openly pushing for a return to feudalism is pushing that limit.
@Stephen Stralka, I wish it were not so – a party whose platform, overtly or covertly is about getting everybody but the top 1 or 2 % to foot the bills – but this is what they’re currently doing and getting away with it. The right has so successfully crippled government and demonized it – look at how the word “politician” routinely draws snickers – that they can succesfully make the pitch that government and taxes are for losers. The logical consequence of that position is that losers should pay. I have no doubt they’ll continue to be successful at squeezing and destroying what’s left of the middle class only until there is an open revolt. That’s how far we’ve fallen. It’s going to take a Marie Antoinette level of callousness and pain to get anything like effective pushback.
On other blogs, I’ve seen discussions over the conflict about whether it’s better to be ruled by competent evil or incompetent evil. Kim Il Jong is pretty clearly the poster boy example of incompetent evil. GW Bush is probably somewhere in the middle. If Jeb! is the smart one, I can see people pinning their hopes on him being at least as competent as Junior – a low bar to reach, I understand. Each Republican administration tends to be worse than the one preceding it, and the day will come, I fear, when we will long for merely competent evil.
Gulag, thanks – I bookmarked Idiot America. Am packing into my holiday travel bag (to the mountains!) ReInventing Collapse, by Dmitri Orlov. He survived the collapse of the Soviet Union (or, the “SU” as he calls it), and draws instructive parallels between it and our predicament in the US. I’ve read a few chapters so far, and it is a hilarious (Orlov is an entertaining writer), if very depressing read. I like the way he flips between the US and the SU.
moonbat,
Thanks for the tip. I’ll have to read Orlov. Basically, I’ve been saying we’re becoming more and more like the old SU ever since I was in JHS and HS, and Nixon was President. My Dad used to argue with me. Then he saw that I was right somewhere in the middle of Reagan’s first term.
If you look at Russia now, it’s basically an Oligarchy, with questionable election results.
So, based on that, maybe I need to amend what I used to say to “We’re becoming more and more like the new Russia.” Or, is it that they’re becoming more like us? Hmm… Probably the latter. YIKES!!!
Gulag, my Russian daughter-in-law is pretty much on the same page as you. She says that, with the fall of the SU, the KGB took over the Russian government and turned it into a criminal enterprise that exploits the masses to serve the greedy few.
Hmm . . . Now why does that sound familiar to me?
I remember the 1970s, when people thought America and the Soviet Union were converging: the USA would become more socialist, and the SU would become more capitalist. Sadly that didn’t happen. It became evident during the Bush years: Capitalism destroyed communism, and it’s now destroying democracy.
I found this page entertaining:
http://www.nndb.com/group/315/000128928/