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Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Senator cures cancer, invents Internet, and discovers fabled Iraqi WMDs!

Oh yes, yes she did go there.

According to reliable media source, Sinbad the Comedian, Hillary Clinton may have, uh, embellished her combat experience in Bosnia.

So?

I mean, seriously, so?

Look bullshitting your way into the White House is a time honored tradition in the United States. Her husband did it. So did the current jackass. And fudging the truth is, on the face of things, a required skill in a President. I mean, seriously here, what if Lyndon Johnson couldn't have lied flat out with a straight face about the Gulf of Tonkin? Why, we might never have gotten into Vietnam! Think of all the great movies that would never have gotten made! The books that never would have been written. We'd have lost three decade's worth of entertainment. The whole world changing hippy peace movement wouldn't have happened, my God, the music - we'd have lost the music! What, I say what, would we compare every military action to nowadays? Pundits and newspaper editors would have nothing to work with; Iraq, Another Day At Disneyworld just doesn't have the same ring as Iraq, The New Vietnam?

And Nixon, what if Nixon told the truth about Watergate? Forest Gump would have been a lesser movie for it. Woodward and Bernstein would still be nothing but bullpen stringers if it wasn't for Nixon, and All the President's Men friggin' made Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford's respective careers. Thank God for Nixon's ability to bullshit.

Hell, even Vice Presidents need the ability to bullshit. Al Gore invented the internet and discovered an inconvenient truth - he got the Nobel Prize and an Oscar!

Look at Jimmy Carter, remember him? No? He told the truth. Nothing, barely a footnote in history. How about Gerry Ford. Loser.

Reagan was the consummate bullshit artist. He was so good at it in fact, that he's a role model for the GOP! And Bill Clinton, need I go there? Hillary learned from the best. And then there's George the Lesser Decider, the King of the Malleable Past. Tell us about Vietnam, George. "Oh hell, yes, there was this one time I was knee deep in a bucket of hotwings outside a Louisiana National Guard Post, I took some fire the next morning in the shitter, I can tell you!"

Seriously, what's a presidential candidate anyway? A candidate isn't a person, a presidential candidate is entertainment. A president is a dozen speech writers, a make up guy, a voice coach, a public relations firm, and a dozen talk show hosts. So Hillary bullshitted about her past? Good! She's got the mad skillz I want in a President. And I say fuck it, if you're going to do it, go big. The bigger the better. Americans like to be entertained, give us a story, Hill, make it a good one.


First Lady Hillary Clinton visits Philippines, draws fire.



I'd like to be charitable. I'd like to say I've been in similar situations and I know how information can get confused. I'd like to say that Hillary Clinton was telling what she thought was the truth, that she was repeating what her security detail told her. But, if you watch her and her daughter walk from the plane (the video is widely available, I'm not going to repost it here), you can easily see that there is no threat - and she is clearly aware that there is no threat, at all. Because, really, do you think that even cast iron Hillary Clinton would walk across open tarmac with her daughter in tow if there was even the slightest chance of sniper fire?

As I said over on Refugees from the City, I think that smell is the smell of desperation. Sad and inevitable.

22 comments:

  1. Nice. I guess the reason that this is causing such an uproar is that it's Hillary - the candidate people love to hate. Also, you point about the previous bullshitters in office is absolutely correct - we just usually like our politicians to start lying to us *after* they've been elected. We expect that.
    Anyhow, as previously requested....
    http://www.crius.net/zone/forumdisplay.php?f=28
    That's a link to my primary home project - a Wing Commander game. It's called Pioneer, and I've done much of the artwork for it. Anyhow, more spaceships galore, and if you've ever played WC you might get a kick out of it.

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  2. Damn, Howie, you're good. Very nice.

    What modeling program are you using?

    I fooled around with DesignCAD 3D a while back, but it's got nowhere near the detail you've got there.

    The rest of you, go check out Howie's stuff. Very cool, even if you're not a big squishing fan of scifi art. Impressive, most impressive.

    (And he wasn't spamming for compliments, I asked him to give me a link in a previous post)

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  3. It's not that we like liars. The blowback when a president gets caught lying is always a bitch: LBJ became a one-termer, Nixon resigned in disgrace, Clinton was impeached. Reagan and Bush the Elder found themselves under clouds of congressional investigation (and Reagan would have been in some deep shit if there hadn't been a small horde of people falling on their swords for him). Bush The Lesser is one of the least popular presidents in history and may do more to restore the Democrats to power than any politician out there. Even Dwight "Well that certainly isn't our high-tech spy plane" Eisenhower found hismelf a little humiliated on the world stage.

    The problem for Ms. Clinton isn't that she's lying too soon, it's that she's getting busted too early. And for what? It's a dumb lie. The snipers story is unnecessary and easily debunked--you could still spin an interesting narrative about what your trip to Bosnia entailed. Hell, none of her embellishments were necessary: the story could be "I went to the Bosnia peace talks as a non-participating observer and learned a great deal about blah-blah-blah..." and it would still give her more foreign policy experience than the Shrub had when he was elected.

    I really wish she'd stop doing this. I want to like Ms. Clinton. I want to love Ms. Clinton--actually, I thought she was made of Awesome for a little while in the early '90s. But when you lie... just... spontaneously, like that, in a way that's unnecessary and is going to get you your ass handed to you.... It's hard to get my head around, really. I have to wonder about... character, a word I hate to even say during an election year unless I'm talking about gaming. (The best comment on a politician's character is still Al Gore's sprightly "I'm a 12th-level Vice President!" on Futurama; Al, any time I'm feeling down on you, I remind myself of that guest appearance, and much is forgiven.)

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  4. Eric, yep.

    Frankly I think that's pretty much it for her. Within a week of Obama's inspired race in America speech, Clinton gets caught in a major faux pas. Do the math.

    I think she's scared, scared of Obama and that Richardson has thrown in with him, chiefly because of that speech. She needed something - and her "I've got more experience" is stretched about as thin as it will go. If fact, I think it just snapped.

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  5. and is it just me, or is Richardson looking like a VP nominee?

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  6. It's not just you, Jim. But seriously, his time at Energy was full of bullshit. I know that the Secretary doesn't have his finger on everything that happens in his organization, but his complicity in destroying Wen Ho Lee's career is pretty damning. Sure, he admitted that he'd made a mistake, but not before he was essentially forced to do so.

    I actually don't have that much of an opinion on Richardson, beyond the DOE debacle. I think there are much less attractive candidates out there.


    I'm still dreaming of a true ticket for change - Gravel/Paul 2008. That would be a hoot.

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  7. To clarify some - DOE is an agency I used to work with on research grant/contracts. Total clusterfuck on their end. Nice money, horrible agency.

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  8. Thanks, Jim! I'm using a combination of 3ds Max 9 (32 Bit version) and Photoshop CS2. And not to continue to spam, but you might find these interesting as well. I'm sorry to do this, but these links require registration at the site to see some of the images. Pray forgiveness.
    http://www.scifi-meshes.com/forums/3d-wips/37144-future-vtol-heli-thing.html
    http://www.scifi-meshes.com/forums/3d-wips/20337-earth-mars-transit-vehicle.html
    http://www.scifi-meshes.com/forums/3d-wips/26435-something-random.html
    Heh, I'll stop now.

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  9. It's ok, Howie, I like your work and I want to see more of it.

    I'm doing some design graphics for my current novel and I may have some questions for you down the road. I'm a pretty fair artist and I've done some graphic design. I've done some black and white sketches for my book, originally to get things straight in my head - then thought, hey, these would be cool additions to the novel.

    ------------

    Tania, yeah, DOE has never impressed me, and never less than right now.

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  10. And Jim's resemblance to a Mary Sue continues to grow. ;)

    Jim, can I be you in a future life?

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  11. Anne, well, you can be me right now. For the right price, bidding starts at $1Million.

    But, buyers must meet certain criteria. First, they must demonstrate a facility with the curmudgeon lifestyle (Hey, you kids get off my grass. Oooooh, where's my shotgun and the rocksalt rounds?). Next, you must be on at least two government watch lists, preferably something to do with whipped cream, two tons of cocaine, a 'misplaced' Army weapons shipment, and a lost weekend in Matzalan. You must have a regulation 'high and tight, #2 razor cut on top,' and you must despise creationists and GWB (OK, that last one is a freebie).

    I keep the lathe.

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  12. Yo Jim,

    Barefoot in the Park
    Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
    The Hot Rock
    The Candidate
    Jeremiah Johnson
    The Way We Were
    The Sting
    The Great Gatsby
    The Great Waldo Pepper
    Three Days of the Condor

    The Graduate
    Midnight Cowboy
    Little Big Man
    Straw Dogs
    Papillon
    Lenny

    Just Sayin, Dude. (And, as Eric says, it wasn't even necessary.)

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  13. Nathan, nobody would have ever heard of any those movies if it wasn't for Nixon.

    Redford would have ended up selling salad dressing or something.

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  14. Iraq, Another Day At Disneyworld

    That sounds pretty dreadful in and of itself, actually.

    Yeah, I'm pretty much done with Ms. Hillary. She's rubbed me the wrong way for some time, but I kept trying to convince myself I was being too hard on her. I wasn't. She's a lying pile of poo.

    I will have to look into the incident Tania mentions, because Richardson was my favorite candidate before he dropped out. I would dearly love an Obama/Richardson ticket.

    And Jim? You really are turning into a Mary Sue. Just sayin'.

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  15. Well, if you mean the part of the Wikipedia Mary Sue definition that goes "... being remarkably attractive in comparison to the other characters" around here, well yeah, I can buy into that :)

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  16. Jim-Sue,

    Don't take this the wrong way, but you're not that irresistible. I'm finding myself quite about to resist.

    ;)

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  17. Resistance is futile. Prepare to be assimilated. Your technology will be added to the greater whole that is me.

    Just saying.

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  18. Even considering the Wen Ho Lee affair, I could live with Obama picking Richardson as his VP.

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  19. Jim-Sue, the high and tight requirement is kinda discriminatory. How 'bout off the collar? Only Demi Moore and Natalie Portman look decent with buzz cuts.

    And isn't that pricing kind of high considering the current recessive trend? What happens if one of us takes the plunge and buys your life, and finds out in a year it's only worth $600,000 and we have negative equity? Who the heck would we mail the keys to?

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  20. Jeri, my life, my criteria.

    You buy it, you can make your own criteria. Don't worry about the negative equity, the economy will turn around - the President's got a plan...

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  21. I must admit, the high and tight was one of the first things I noticed when I met Jim, having grown up between Ft. Wainwright and Eielson AFB, you zoom in on the military haircut.

    A person just wouldn't be "Jim Wright" without it.

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