A series of “news” stories has informed Americans that the Senate will become Republican controlled in the mid-term elections and that the Republicans will maintain their majority in the House of Representatives. The reliability factor for exit polls was questioned and found wanting, but these new polls seem good enough for the conservatively owned main stream media to endorse the idea that the results of next week’s mid-term elections will only be questioned by conspiracy theory loons. It sounds like a set-up to cynics and skeptics.
On Thursday afternoon, Mike Zint, a journalist and political activist, was reporting on his Facebook page that the San Francisco Chronicle had posted the story with the results of next Tuesday’s mid-term elections.
There was a front page story in the New York Times, on Monday of this week, that indicated that the stigma of the Bush Dynasty may have been expunged from the minds of American voters and that JEB Bush will be the front runner for the Republican nomination to become their candidate for President in 2016.
The number of pundits offering liberal ideas and criticism is shrinking rapidly and so, apparently, America is ready to embrace the concept of a Republican Supreme Court, a Republican majority Senate and House of Representatives, and a resumption of the Bush Dynasty without a word of dissent.
Meanwhile, in Berkeley, when Bill Mahr was invited to be the commencement speaker at the end of this Semester, which is the fiftieth anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, a protest against that selection was held because Muslim students felt that some of his recent views rendered him unworthy of being offered the opportunity to be the commencement speaker. The offer had not been revoked as the week drew to a close.
What’s happening in the Middle East?
The efforts by the authorities to quarantine health workers returning to the USA, has caused others to warn that such strict measures will have a negative effect on the number of people who volunteer to go to Africa and help control the Ebola epidemic. We used to know a city editor who constantly advised reporters: “No good deed goes unpunished!”
If the election results next Tuesday confirm the idea that America has embraced a Republican majority for the Senate and strengthened the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, then perhaps we will renew our efforts to write columns about less partisan topics and renew our efforts to get a chance to cover the next installment of the Oscar Awards Ceremony.
On Friday, October 31, 2014, “the authorities” were predicting that a million people would turn out to stand in a rainstorm to see the baseball team that just won the World Series, the voters of America will give the Republican Party a majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives, who will prepare the way for JEB to be inaugurated as President of the United States in January of 2017. The window of opportunity for the World’s Laziest Journalist to write columns urging sanity and logic is shrinking rapidly.
Perhaps we should do an about-face and start encouraging America’s rush to complete total f*****g insanity.
Now the disk jockey will play “Singing in the Rain (when was the last time you saw “Clockwork Orange?”),” “Crazy,” and the Rolling Stones “contractual obligation album” project. Have a “run towards the flash” type week. Tune in next week, same bat time, same bat channel (?).
Waiting for Godot (AKA JEB)
The long march to the historic ceremonies that will officially mark the coronation/inauguration of King JEB I and the resumption of the Bush Dynasty began this week when the news flacks swooned over the implications of the mid-term election results. In retrospect, future historians will realize that this year’s mid-term elections gave the Republicans a mandate to rescind Obamacare, start a new movement to impeach a Democratic President and take care of the Social Security mess. The impeachment of Obama will (in effect) scuttle Hilary’s attempt to gain the Democratic Party’s 2016 Presidential nomination because Joseph Biden will have the incumbent’s advantage for getting the Party’s nomination because he will be inaugurated as President moments after the impeachment is completed.
A radical faction of researchers at the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory contends that this hypothetical assertion meshes perfectly with their contention that Obama’s phenomenal rise to the Presidency was a Trojan horse strategy orchestrated by Karl Rove.
Some of the young wisenheimer staff members at the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory, while watching the Election Night TV coverage, started greeting each new Republican victory by raising their right arm (with the hand flat and palm) down at a 45 degree angle and shouting: “God bless America!”
Many citizen journalists have a tendency to regard the Internets as omniscient and infallible but we contend that the Internet is fallible and that some facts are missing in action on the Internets.
On Tuesday of this week, the World’s Laziest Journalist encountered a young couple in San Francisco who were perplexed by the construction site for the renovated Transbay Bus Terminal. They had a hand held device that indicated the Greyhound Bus depot was there. That’s where it used to be. We had to practically take them by the hand and lead them to the temporary Transbay Bus Terminal about two blocks away where the Greyhound Bus depot is for the time being.
Seeing the dichotomy when reality differs from information delivered by a computer gave us a specific example of how and why the “conspiracy theory” label will always trump reality and make perceptive punditry a Myth of Sisyphus style task.
In last week’s column, the World’s Laziest Journalist predicted: “ . . . the results of next week’s mid-term elections will only be questioned by conspiracy theory loons.” Sure enough on Thursday, November 6, 2014, the front page of the paper that published the Pentagon Papers (the New York Times) features a story by Jonathan Martin, under a headline asserting: “In States Seen to Be Tilting Left, Voters Defy Democrats’ Forecast.”
[Speaking of the New York Times, we heard a hot rumor this week that the Automobile Section in the Sunday edition will be history by the end of this year.]
If the mainstream media and the most popular Internet web sites say that JEB is the front runner for the Republican nomination, then America will not bother to debate if the Bush brand name has been poisoned by George W. Bush. JEB is the front runner and will get the nomination and forget about any spill over effect from George W. Bush’s unsuccessful military adventures in the Middle East.
The World’s Laziest Journalist has written about a half million worlds for the Internet including a good deal of words predicting that JEB will live in the White House someday.
The audience for such dire predictions is meager at best. Americans don’t want to hear about it. The mid-term election results have convinced us that writing warnings about President JEB Bus is a wast of time and keystrokes.
Apparently the USA wants a Republican led government and a restoration of the Bush Dynasty and columns lamenting the absurd aspect of those two topics is just a waste of time and energy. Perhaps President JEB is exactly what many Democrats want but they just don’t have the cajones to actually say so and to vote that way.
Warnings and analytical based predictions about what the consequences of a Republican surge in the mid-term elections may have been available to the voters but the World’s Laziest Journalist did not notice any such in-depth forecasts.
If voters are suddenly informed that, in retrospect, the mid-term elections were a referendum on the Social Security Program and the need to Impeach the incumbent in the White House . . . then the “caveat emptor” principle may also become a retroactive factor in this week’s election results. What middle class American doesn’t love being ambushed by lawyers? Don’t the folks who get zapped by a foreclosure on their homes readily admit that the bankers won the game fair and square?
Why was it left up to only a few political pundits to point out the long term dangers of a Republican “landslide”? Well, maybe, again in retrospect, these rare and obscure Cassandra warnings can function as a “you were warned” rebuttal to the cries of “foul!”?
Wasn’t a bad guy holding the deed to Nell’s house a leitmotif for a very popular TV cartoon series in the Fifties and Sixties?
Next week’s column may be a review of the Arnold Newman photo exhibition which opened recently in San Francisco or it maybe a review of John Birmingham’s book “He Died with a Felafel in his Hand,” or maybe something else.
[Note from the photo editor: We used a photo of a Shattuck Avenue panhandler as a visual metaphor for the Democratic Party on Wednesday morning of this week. We also used a photo of two UCB engineering students from Paris (France not Texas) who were dressed up for Halloween as characters from the movie “Clockwork Orange.” They will remind film fans of the treatment Democrats can expect from the Republicans after the new session starts in Jan.]
The closing quote is a variation of folk wisdom supplied by W. C. Fields: “If at first, you don’t succeed; try, try again . . . then quit because there’s no use being a damn fool about it.”
Now the disk jockey will play Nancy Sinatra’s “These (Republican) boots are made for walking,” Cher’s “Don’t come crying to me,” and (of course!) “Singing in the Rain.” We have to go look for a “JEB in ’16” t-shirt. Have a “if you can’t beat ‘em; join ‘em” type week.