This is the first of a series of Fe-911 special reports on the Presidential debates here at Planet Waves, where the motto is: “We watch so you don’t have to!!” –fb
Officially, the Silly Season of 2016 — as we in America call the Presidential election campaign — has begun. Last night, much like HBO boxing events, the Republican Party officially offered not one but TWO rounds of debates at Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena: a preliminary round of low-polling candidates like Rick Perry, Carly Fiorina and Lindsay Graham followed by the main event featuring the more highly polled.
Using their earth-given names, these top 10 contenders — anyone with more than 2% polling popularity among Republicans — were: Manhattan billionaire Donald Trump; Florida Governor Jeb Bush; Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker; neurosurgeon Ben Carson; Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee; Texas Senator Ted Cruz; Kentucky Senator Rand Paul; Florida Senator Marco Rubio, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Ohio Governor John Kasich.
These ten represent the highest polling presidential candidates among Republicans, which I like to call the New Order of Cthulian Leadership vying for the role of Extreme High Overlord of the United States.
FOX News did right this round, deciding ten was the most number of candidates you could cram on one stage at a time. This gave the candidates the opportunity for as much 10-second sound byte, personal attack, Obama-cootie accusation and starting-World-War-III talk that could reasonably be digested by a viewing public. I heard the earlier debate of five candidates was far more substantial, giving actual reasoned responses to questions, though no one was allowed in there to watch.
But this is what you need to know: Mr. Trump was clearly the front-runner, was booed for refusing to rule out a third party run, bragged about his bankruptcies and opted for single payer health care. Neurosurgeon Ben Carson will use water boarding as torture; and Jeb Bush attacked President Obama for his brother’s economic recession.
Ted Cruz will throw out Obamacare with an executive action, and everyone wants to build a dome over the United States, with one entry point: a turnstile with a ticket taker for immigrants to enter at the border. Mike Huckabee plans to invoke the 5th and 14th Amendments of the Constitution to protect the rights and personhood of unborn citizens, and if need be, could invoke the 2nd Amendment for the unborn to stand their ground in the face of imminent threat by birth control.
In other words, coining a new word for the English vocabulary, it was a combination of clash and bluster, which I call blusterfuckery. However, much to the horror of the rest of us, the Republican base loved it. I found after two hours of watching I needed a purifying mud facial to remove the excess of an unidentifiable sheen of an origin I could not comprehend. I swear I did not see any tentacles. And thank God for Jon Stewart, whose finale was on the same night, reminding me that human life does exist on Earth.
Should no winner be declared at the end of the 11 scheduled Republican debates, the top three remaining candidates will compete to the death by gladiatorial combat. This will be broadcast live by Univision.
I will return on Monday with my regular column on actual news.
Brilliant 🙂 laughed all the way through. I hope Cthulhu will not be too offended by being compared to these jerks.
Thanks, Amy.
I stopped drinking at the 15th utterance of the word “unborn”, having already gone through the popcorn. The Big Cthulu should have consumed all of them with one gulp through its beak.
The kitchen synchronicity continues unabated. Last Friday at the Full Moon, the Sun was conjunct my natal Pluto and I found my thoughts returning to my adolescence and wondering exactly how Dorothy Provine from TV show The Roaring 20’s had managed so effectively to infiltrate my young mind and capture my culture. Fortunately, there turned out to be a fair bit of astrology to explain it all, which was something of a relief, but yesterday, for some unknown reason, I found myself parodying her most famous hit, dancing round the kitchen singing Don’t Bring Cthulhu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_5eXN6bkyg
Geoff:
Jupiter is opp. my natal Merc and both close to squaring to Saturn. Azathoth, Dagon, Deep Ones, Hastur, Nyarlathotep should not be invoked while close to sharp objects. I wonder, however, how they would look in fringed smocks Dorothy Provine used in her show. Am I tempting fate to even think it?
Great piece, kiddo — and oh so true. I was half-way through my own piece when I read yours and realized we were on the same subject … so, if you don’t mind … I’ll throw out what I’d written earlier today, I don’t think we dup’ed anything. Gratitude …
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Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi posted The Official GOP Debate Drinking Game Rules involving the liberal use of Jagermeister at the mention of words like Benghazi, Kenya, thug or ovens, or phrases like “culture of dependency” and “All Lives Matter.” I suspect if readers actually took Taibbi’s advice seriously on when to knock ’em back on Thursday night, they still can’t uncross their eyes to read this.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-official-gop-debate-drinking-game-rules-20150805
This game was only applicable for the Top Tier candidates, nine of which tried all manner of stupid human tricks to take the lead from the nations current King of Bellacosity, He Who Must Not Be Named (rhymes with Rump.) Taibbi had this to say about the other seven hopefuls:
The second tier of seven candidates – what Trump would call “losers” – now includes Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki and Jim Gilmore. They will be debating at a kiddie table separately from the other candidates, and will reportedly be euthanized by a veterinarian after the event.
Of the matinee seven, Carly Fiorina seems to have broken away from the pack, and since I didn’t watch I can’t say much about her performance. I will say that having witnessed her run in California, and seen her guesting on Bill Maher, she seems to be extremely one-dimensional (read that phony,) passive-aggressive and a bit of a scold. She is also willing — even eager, as she told the nation yesterday — to shut down government in order to defund Planned Parenthood (which spends 3% of its budget providing abortion services and none of that government funded.)
Another ‘witness’ game was proposed by the National Partnership for Women and Families, who asked its supporters to guess how many times top tier candidates would say the word ‘women’ (in some constructive sense) and while the majority of responders guessed 1-3 times, in actuality there was NO mention of women in this first debate, more focused on the pro-birth issues and revoking the Affordable Care Act but strikingly disinterested in womens health. No surprise there, although one would think — following a GOP pledge to be more sensitive to Hispanics and women — they would offer some reassuring tidbit as lip-service.
http://www.nationalpartnership.org
Less a debate than (to borrow from Howard Fineman) a game show staged by FOX, the Donald seemed to be the winner of the first GOP debate, although this morning he’s complaining about “unfair” questions, including the one moderator Megyn Kelly directed at him about having called women he disliked ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs’ and ‘disgusting animals.’ Trump interrupted to say, “Only Rosie O’Donnell,” and got a standing ovation. That’s an iconic response from a party that considers women second class, at best, property, at worst (and opinionated lesbians with children anathema.)
What is clear from this first toe in the roiling Republican waters is that the base adores the belligerent, anti-government, pro-business plain speech of Donald Trump, whom one pundit identified as the new “spiritual epicenter” of the Republican party. This is both good news and bad. Good news if enough people find Trump personally mean-spirited and childish, his political position simplistic and unworkable. Bad news if — gasp! — the Mean Kids manage to take the White House, hell bent on taking us back into a century when ‘freedom’ meant the ability to work a lifetime without achieving a decent lifestyle, assured to die broke and helpless.
Not mentioned in this debate? Voting rights, a cornerstone issue that the right has spent decades eroding. Bernie Sanders has called the most recent attacks on voting rights an offense to the conscience of every American, and proposed sweeping change to guarantee this essential right to all citizens. But it was Hillary the Pubs spoke about last night as the one to beat, absolutely convinced that Bernie is no contender, being a Socialist and all.
(That’s all, folks — just to continue an excellent conversation :))
I have a feeling there’s a worse fate waiting for those who are tempted to vote for the Donald, Fe.
According to the good book wiki, the first recorded mention of Azathoth was in a note Lovecraft wrote to himself in 1919 that read simply, “AZATHOTH—hideous name”. That’s the anaretic year preceding the 20s, so the blind idiot god would probably have been prepared for a bit of a shimmy and would have dressed accordingly.
I don’t get why these men don’t just be themselves. By that I mean, be who their families love. I can’t even imagine how far removed some of these men are from their personas. I’m a very forgiving, and understanding of my relatives’ faults. I bet if I had to I could love one of those blusterfuckers.
A partial explanation as to why Trump is leading in the polls: transiting Ophelia the asteroid is exactly conjunct the U.S. Sibly chart Sun at 13+ Cancer. You know, Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet? The one who went mad?
be
Yet there is something very clear-sighted even in her madness, is there not? I sense that she unconsciously understood what was happening around her, was subject to bad luck through the unwitting blunders of her male relations, and yet still tried to behave like a good young lady (for the time). Of course she failed. Hopefully America will soon wake up from this bewildering dream, the cognitive dissonance of docility will just fall away, and the people will hit back at this unstable and obsolete government of the corporations.
Amen Amy.