Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Ted Bundy wasn't an obvious madman. My understanding is that he was quite charming. And a law student to boot!

Yes. The Florida judge who sentenced him to go see Old Sparky regretted that Ted hadn't followed the law-school track better. Said, I would have been glad to see you practicin' in this heah court. But you chose anothah path, pardner.

You could see the judge's regret was genuine -- mourning a fellow lawyer who's just gone that little bit too far.

Hate barry ....Father..... et tu .....?

A fury bred of tedium and isolation

a nauseating giddiness comes over us

Like we're breathing into a paper bag

It may be time to re-evaluate the definition of "obvious madman." Perhaps you've had it backward the entire time.

"tedium and isolation", for sure. You spending a lot of time these days in the pool parlor, Owen?

There are obvious and not-so-obvious madmen; and of course obviousness is very much in the eye of the beholder. To most of my neighbors, for example, Rick Santorum is an obvious madman but Obie appears perfectly reasonable. I don't pretend to justify or explain this; I merely note the fact.

I'd prefer some nutjob from the JDL bust a cap in his ass for failing to serve Israel with sufficient enthusiasm. I might even break a smile at the irony of it.

Bush was an obvious sociopath, the way he got that gleam in his eye and that sadistic little smirk whenever he told a lie. Same for Giuliani, Rahm Emmanuel and a few others of that ilk that have "scumbag" written all over them.

Obama's flat, emotionless affect is hard to read. He's got the face of an assembly-line worker so conditioned to shutting his brain off to get through the 9 to 5 grind it's become engraved in his countenance. A painfully earnest but joyless functionary whose occasional displays of enthusiasm seem as scripted as a tampon commercial. He performs his assigned role with unquestioning efficiency, but he doesn't seem to be enjoying himself. I hate to use the term "house negro" but damned if it doesn't apply.

It's like choosing between the homeless guy singing on the A train this morning--crazy with a capital c; but crazy in a benign, enduring way--vs the charming, good with kids, calm, cool and collected and gainfully-employed serial killer living next door. Obviously the Democrat voter will take the serial killer.

Obvious in this case is bug-eyed and drooling. A Manson can't get away with it for long for that very reason. However, a Bundy or Gacy who "seems normal" can operate with impunity for years.

To a Kevin Drum or a Josh Marshall, as long as they don't get any drool on their pants, they'll get with the program. Years later, they can claim, "who knew."

As Mr. Smiff says, it's a matter of perspective. I see a Big Dawg interrupt a campaign to fry a vegetable, a Dubya cackling at Karla Faye, or an Obie snickering about drones and dates, and it's like watching an episode of Dark Minds on the ID channel. There's no surprises in my world.

an American 'election' ought to attract no reasonable person.

Perhaps this is already the case? And those picking out the candidates know their customer.

i think my reaction is different

u all seem to note a keen difference between our fearless misleaders and your selves

i wish i could say that about myself

but i can dig both bush junior and bummers
way thru the world

but for chance circumstance
and
effort and talent
i could be either one
and prolly
without a serious deep modification
of my "core values"

now i'm certainly closer to baby bush in most personal ways ...but ...

i guess i'm headed to secularist
humanist hell fire

have fun up there in humane decent guy heaven

sean and peter

happy jack ?

i see purgatory for you

father of course ace
crypto bureaucrat
will wangle hizzseff
a job
at the admissions table

If a job is sociopathic by its very nature, e.g., president of the United States, it requires no sociopath to do it. Hannah Arendt gave us the lowdown on that. All it takes is an especially ambitious fast-lane functionary: someone who has, like most such aspirants, little or no empathy with anyone beyond the immediate circle of the useful.

You could call such a lack of empathy sociopathic, but the reasoning would be circular. A fairly average person, disposed toward success by birth, connections or talents, will fit in with a monstrous regime if that's what he's been brought up to think of as normal.

There are elements of traditional Christianity which are sociopathic, such as eternal, unendurable torture for the damned, which will include the great majority of humankind. But if you're raised to think of this as not only truthful but righteous, you could believe it and never take a step toward being a monster.

Obama is a moralizing phony, perhaps as adept at the game as Bill Clinton. If he believes in some of his bullshit, it would only make him all the more contemptible. I probably despise him as much as our host does. But Obama is no big deal; he plays president as if he were on a TV series, the kind we all grew up watching. This is what the presidency demands: telegenic, modulated clerics; no more pathological excrescences like LBJ or Nixon.

Antonello

Barry contemptible ?
Not to me

I suppose we have a gradient here

It strikes me the top Nazis might have profiled differently
then the present white house clique

And Nixon as something different from Clinton ? ..why not

The difference between Nixon on the one hand and Climbama/Oclinton on the other comes down to this: Nixon was un-cool, a despised awkward goofy wanker at college, determined to visit his revenge on the people who made him suffer. Whereas our first two black presidents *were* the kind of people who made Dick suffer. Now they want to make us suffer too -- for our own good, of course.

Excellent thought, Peter. I think the marketing experts and aspiring salesmen have selected their customers in the same way big media selects theirs. They have no interest in making costly, time consuming efforts. They want cretins and they want them as cheaply as they can get them. If and when they don't have enough, they've found their energies are better spent creating them from raw stock.

Y'know, things look really bad now, but something I like to tell myself is that a whole lot can still happen between now and November. Weirder shit has happened... and believe you me, I know weird, 'cause I've seen it.

@Fadduh Smiff on 03.11.12 @21:10:
First two black presidents? What'chew talkin' 'bout, Willis?

Clinton, our First Black President? Don't forget, this was a guy who didn't know who Thelonius Monk was. I don't give a damn' if Maya Angelou -- as I recall -- called him the First Black President. I've never trusted poets, anyway; they're fucking weird, man. Don't forget that Maya Angelou also authored one of two off-scale smarmy love letters to Obama early in the '08 primaries. (Alice Walker wrote the other; read it at your peril.)

Obama, our Second Black President? Bah. Goddamn' preppy fraternity Oreo. I've seen guys like him in college, so I know what I'm talking about. That's why I feel so slimed when I see that video footage of him singing an Al Green song at the Apollo. I really hate watching Barack Obama pretending to be black. It's even worse than Hillary Clinton, back in '08, speaking with an obviously fake Southern accent while campaigning in the South.

The Powers That Be™ will never allow a real Black President, that's for goddamn' sure. I remember when Obummer was first running for the Donkeycratic nomination; all the chattering heads on TV were talking about how he had no "baggage", i.e. he didn't grow up like a normal young Black man in America. He didn't have to deal with substandard education, or police harassment or brutality, or discrimination in the job market. He pretty much skated into everything, and that's what the chattering heads liked about him: not having had to deal with the kind of racism that most young Black men in this country have to deal with growing up, there was less chance of him causing trouble for White America. Check out all his speeches from the '08 campaign; damn' near every one was a reassurance to White America that he wouldn't cause them any trouble -- especially that horrible-assed Father's Day speech. At one point during the '08 campaign, someone -- I forget who -- asked me if I'd vote for a black candidate, and I told 'em yeah, if I supported his platform -- and if there were a black candidate actually running.

Now, Jesse Jackson -- even inasmuch as he's a totally self-absorbed media-attention-sucking vortex, he'd have had a crack at being our First Black President, if the Donkeycratic Party hadn't sabotaged his campaign.

Fadduh Smiff sez:
Obie's shoo-in status is a bitter disappointment to me. I really loathe the guy...

Oh, and I almost forgot... don't forget that in the past four years, every time it seemed like the GOP had self-destructed, the Donkeycrats would let 'em back up off the mat. Every goddamn' time. So, there's still hope.

(D'ahh, shit, man; sorry, I said "hope".)

i always thought it was toni morrison who called clinton the first black prez.

mike
i appreciate your nod to jesse

too many corked ass holes
wanna run him out of prog town on a rail
hell he and Al sharpton paid dues
for their nice large lounging rock in the sun

they deserve some respect
now and again

okay ....so does a canal horse
or
" a tumler "

I'm for four more years. Cannot stand the thought of progressive bleating about the coming Iran War. Want them cheering for it, guiltily.