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How can someone sit there with a straight face and say that media shouldn't be reporting on war, while engaging in that very same activity at the exact same time, and not even notice?
Tha's not mediocrity.. that's downright mental incompetence. Let's stop lowering the bar, here. That's the problem. We lower the bar so much so everybody gets a trophy, nobody fails even if they're drooling on themselves.
Joe the Plumber is an idiot. He's not mediocre, he's a few steps below that. Moronic, perhaps. Deficient, surely.
The problem lies with the tiny little details lacking in Palestinian day-to-day life, such as running water, food, unbombed shelter, unbombed educational facilities, a viable economy, jobs, and of course, the ability to wash one's hair without being blown to smithereens, to name but a few.
CAREFUL! Dan Quayle might sue!
Ed
Was anyone ever able to ascertain whether he's in fact related to the Wurzelberger who had a link to the Keating Five?
Sadly, and disgustingly, what the Repug's who really run things want is cowed, dumb, COMPLIANT, cheap and expendable work force. That's it. Intellectual curiosity leads to slef awareness which leads to the unwashed masses figuring out that they can be in charge ... And we can't have that can we.
Why should the filthy rich businessmen be fed up with a diet of dumb? That diet leads right to a more riches.
Anyway, point being that there's a lot of room for pointy headed types that went to community college and people with "real world (or sub-affluent)" experience in Washington. And there's good reason to distrust, or at least not to take uncritically, the advice of all the certifiably smart people who went through Harvard and Yale, and whose forebears have gotten us into plenty of messes (see, for example, "meltdown, financial").
They need to get their heads out of the sand.
People like Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin used to be ashamed of their lack of knowledge and intellect, now they are proud of it. They bask in it and are proud of themselves for being stupid and ignorant. Heck there is even talk that the GOP will try and get Joe to run for the Illinois Senate seat in 2010. The sad fact is that he could get up on stage and speak jabberwocky and fart and drool over himself and he would still get a good chunk of votes from the idiot population in Ohio.
1: Republicans treat meidocirty, even stupidity, as a virtue. Political folklore, not to mention countless hours of TV shows and movies, lionize the "common man" who nonetheless knows more than the big shot power brokers. The guys who aw-shucks their way to the microphone and say something like "well, I'm no politician...I'm just a simple (insert simple profession here ) from (insert typical small-town), but it seems to me like (insert simple homsepun wisdom about the state of the world that knocks evil doers or ambitious power brokers who can be redeemed but lost their way on their collective ass)." This style of thinking also allows people who think of themselves as regular old common folk to be suspicious of anyone who went to college or succeeded in their lives. As a result, this nation is chocabloc full of individuals who think that thinking is more trouble than it's worth. If you want to be successful in anything other than professional sports or American Idol, you're a jerk. If your job requires you to wear a suit, you're suspicious. Successful people only want to bring us down...soooooo, let's worship at the altar of the successful people who don't act like they're successful! Sure they wear the suits, but they HAVE to! They talk like us, even with their college degrees, and they don't like fancy foods and they shoot straight from the hip and theysurround themselves with good old friends instead of smart people who will change 'em into something they're not, and that's good enough for me!
I swear, politics from the top down to city councils and school boards are filled with this sort of non-logic, and it makes me want to puke. Intelligence and compassion can go hand in hand once in a while. and ironically, the people that these thunderdolts vote for are often neither.
2: Anyone truly smart in the Republican Party...is now a Democrat. Ba-dump bump. But seriously, any Republican with half a rock in his or her head knows the power is in the shadows. Better to get a puppet up there to say the things you want the people to hear, and be in the background where (usually) public scrutiny is non-existent,, and pull the strings and reap the rewards if not the accolades. From a strictly Machiavellian srandpoint, Rove's biggest character flaw is he started to crave the limelight. People started to recognize him as Bush's Brain and instead of going deeper into the shoadows, he started to relish the newfound fame. I'm glad he had that kind of hubris, I shudder to think how much more damage he could've done had he remained invisible except for his hand of Dubya's ass.
3: I hope Samjoe the notta plumber NEVER goes away. He IS the face of the Republican Party, and the more we laugh at that face, the more future generations might believe they're meant for something better than that what that party has to offer them.
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it goes back to the old saying "nobody likes a know-it-all"...
seriously, repugnicans ALWAYS try to paint Dems as intellectual elitists... which makes the average voter feel like they're being spoken down to.
I don't know about anyone else... but I'd rather have someone a bit smarter than I in the positions of power.
I mean, you wouldn't want your brain surgeon to look like Jerry Garcia and call you 'dude', would you?
presidents shouldn't be picked based on whether or not they'd do a funnel with you at a frat party... as is obvious after the last 8 years.
They need these guys because they're dumb enoug to swallow talking points and propaganda whole but too dumb to know that they're being played for laughs. In my opinion, the reason the Repukes want education dismantled, it creates more knuckledragging oafs for their powerbase and that keeps then in power.
It's called marketing. The Republicans attract their elites through back channels, and their is no shortage of them or their money, as the former is roughly defined by the latter.
But they need masses for voting power. To this, they rely on their corporate marketing departments. The corporate elite that dominate the Republican party know that the way to market their product to the masses is to ape the masses.
They know that the decision to buy anything from laundry soap to a six pack of beer to a refrigerator is based upon an emotion or emotional instinct. Putting 'guys like us' - joe six pack and hockey moms - in the driver's seat forces many people to decide between voting for themselves and voting for an abstraction.
Palin, Joe the Plumber, dumb as a box of rocks. The marketing that puts them there, smart. Very smart.
the Republican marketing machine could sell used toothbrushes to their base and make them feel good about the gum disease they got from the previous user, by claiming it was a gift from God..... and it was their job to figure out what God was trying to tell them when their gums start to bleed...
ps - when referring to Palin and Joe the Plumber, we should also include Elizabeth Hasselback in that element of mediocrity, that the Republican marketing machine has been so successful in creating....
The answer is never a positive one.
I consider myself a "regular guy" but I'm no moron. I think the Republicans just celebrate ignorance.
Great line John!
And I agree with brb95....the Joe the Plumber idiot needs to be beaten with a stick. He is way past stupid.
One can argued that Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, even god forbid, Doug Feith were all intellectuals, however they were also so skewered and self righteous in their thinking that it was difficult to have a open discussion with the policies they shoved down Americans' throats. Wolfowitz did try to reach out to all sides during the Iraq war to find a solution, (well he was in charge, until Rumsfeld took over day to day control around the fall of 2003)
I guess my point is that the Republicans are not all Hee Haw watching "know nothings", many like Perle and Wolfowitz were once Democrats, who get so obsess on one goal, it skewers their thinking. Whether it is Middle Eastern Policy, that seemed to come from the salons of Irving Kristol, to bonehead economic policy that people like Feldstein have even come to criticized..
There are intellectuals in the GOP, they are just disingenuous and ignore much of the GOP social policy to appease the social conservatives, except for Scalia, who seemed to want to re-create the United States of Opus Dei.
What makes me think the guys with really big bank accounts like the Republicans because they can so easily influence and buy their base?
If the Republicans want to get back in power, they have put a leash on the Social Conservatives, they need independent voters more than they need Social Conservatives. Independent Voters are the kingmakers of US politics, and both Democrats and Republicans need to appease the Independent voters.
The only time I have ever seen President Bush go to Seattle was for Fundraising, and he wouldn't even be for Seattle for that, (Seattle is up there with San Francisco as Anti Bush) but he would go to Medina and the Eastside of Lake Washington for that. Much like any Republican worth his or her salt, will be in Manhattan for fundraising, given it is the most lucrative places for fundraising.
Stunts like this are all the Rethugs have...
Joe Wurzelbacher comes under rocket fire in Israel (or some such shit)
Wonder how long before MM or AC spreads 'em for the "Plumber?" You know they like to be dominated (wink, wink). Of course, afterwards, there are the trips to the hospital and the orders of protection...
On the other hand what I call "white trash" do not actively seek to advance themselves or their children but dream of a big score to lift themselves up. This is the sort who love Palin and Joe the Plumber.
As a Democrat, who is pretty far to the Left of Obama, I applaud a Palin-Joe-the-Plumber ticket in 2012.
How proud he must be that they're doing their darnedest to prove him right!
You only need ask who actually ran the Bush administration: Cheney, Rumsfeld, a slew of neocon implants, and industry synchophants lathered heavily throughout the federal bureacracy. It is this hidden constituency that will be so hard to dislodge.
It worked really well with "W" being the face of the party but nothing more than a ventriloquist's dummy who had Cheney's evil arm way up his but to make his mouth move. The stupid people are the ones who are most easy to control and manipulate! Most of the truly smart people are happy to have the true power and stay out of the spotlight, and let some dumbass do their dirty work for them. Simple.
But if one of those rubes tries to actually run things, they get run out of town. This is why Faux News seems to have turned against Sarah Palin.
Really a lot of the fringe right vote for the not-so-clever not because they like the "simple folk" who don't use big words, but because they dance to the same tune. Unfortunately, the far right is also a very volatile group, so the second someone is voted in who is not "of the same crop", they will immediately rant about how they are being oppressed.
This has long since moved on from intelligence. It is now a matter of culture.