President Obama has a full plate for 2015. He will have to contend with sending new troops to Iraq, the void created by the removal of the American troops in Afghanistan, relations with Russia and Putin, possible war crimes trials for an ally, the debate over fracking, falling oil prices, police shootings and the deteriorating situation in the Pacific Ocean because of Fukushima. The Republicans will take control of Congress this month and could divert Obama’s attention away from national issues by throwing a move to impeach him onto his agenda.
Cynics, curmudgeons and anarchists might think the impeachment tactic is a hilarious practical joke, but some patriotic Americans might want the chief executive to be able to devote his full attention to the nation’s problems and not have to set aside time to respond to a political side show.
Some Republicans have, from the start of Obama’s term in office, dreamed that the only desirable and appropriate result of the historic and president setting Presidency would be to have him removed by the impeachment process and branded as an incompetent bungling buffoon. Why would they let a few pragmatic considerations influence their chance to make their dreams come true and thereby considerably diminish the chances in the future for making a second replay of the history making election a virtual impossibility?
Predictions that Obama will soon be impeached will seem absurd in retrospect if he is not impeached and will be totally ignored if he is. Since the mainstream media is owned and operated by conservatives, any accurate predictions will be ignored and that brings up the question of why bother to write any such fearless political forecasts?
Conservative pundits have a high likelihood of earning enormous financial rewards for their labor but liberal pundits are doing the Cheshire Cat style disappearing act and are vanishing from the pop culture scene.
So if a fellow is attracted to the punditry game by the prospect of fame, fortune, and fun and if conservative commentators are the only ones permitted to earn big bucks and become celebrities; why should anybody want to write critical assessments of the Republican Reich which is just about to begin in earnest?
Is “just for fun” a legitimate reason for getting up early on a Friday morning to bang out a weekly column?
What if the pundit uses the zen approach to maximize his fun quotient?
Obviously, a husband and a family man can’t expect to have a blast doing fact gathering and expect his wife and kids to approve, but when the pundit is a bachelor who has the basic needs (a bunk and meals) covered, why shouldn’t he accept that his mission in life is to be a proxy for the average IrishCatholicDemocrat voter and to sally forth looking for interesting people, amazing sights, and perceptive insights into the zeitgeist of contemporary society?
If he can and does subsidize his expenses no one would criticize his choices for spending the money, n’est ce pas?
If the prediction that Obama will be impeached early this year is correct, then the people who were so busy reporting on the latest police shootings (like the one December 30 in Bridgeton New Jersey? [Do a Google News search.]) will have to scramble to reassess what the consequences would be of such an impeachment.
If Obama is impeached, Joseph Biden would then become President and as the incumbent would have a virtual lock on the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2016. That would mean that Hillary Clinton would be left crying at the alter, so to speak. All the commentary and speculation about a Hillary vs. JEB contest in 2016 would immediately become extinct verbiage.
If a pundit were to make such a prediction and be wrong couldn’t he just say: “Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi!”?
Big name conservative pundits and commentators will want the maximum “gotcha!” effect of a sudden move to impeach and so they won’t mention any rumblings in Congress that indicate such a move will take place. Liberal pundits use the psychological phenomenon called “projection” to avoid a distasteful subject.
Projection means that since Liberals don’t think that impeachment is a rational move, then they assume that Republicans in Congress will think likewise and so they don’t bring up the possibility.
If a liberal pundit were to approach the possibility from the “How do Republicans think” style of analysis, then they would immediately sound the alarm and shriek: “He’s gonna get impeached !”
The Republicans would immediately debunk the idea by denouncing it as a “conspiracy theory.” For Republicans, labeling something as a conspiracy theory is like playing the ace of trump in a card game. Check and checkmate!
If a knight errant pundit is going to make long-shot predictions doesn’t he occasionally have to scoop the New York Times to counter act his nuisance value?
In the San Francisco Bay Area radio listeners are being tsunami-ed by ads that say folks with poor credit ratings deserve a chance to buy a used car from the advertiser.
The New York Times recently ran a story about how poor and middle class people are being forced to contend with higher interest rates on the loans they do get.
The World’s Laziest Journalist has heard hints that easing restrictions on credit for used car buyers will produce a situation similar to the fiasco that happened in the housing market a few years back. When enough unqualified borrowers default on their car loans, won’t a bail-out (“too big to fail!”) be sure to follow?
If conservative commentators are too busy to give their audiences a heads-up on this déjà vu story and if liberal pundits are too engrossed in the latest cops shoot a young man stories (do a Google News search for “policie shooting” for the latest) to care about what might happen to the used car market, then perhaps the World’s Laziest Journalist can run an item about that topic and then transition to a non sequitur item about the impact on his life of some information found in the Lonely Planet guidebook for Cuba?
On page 229 of the 2000 edition of the Lonely Planet guidebook “Cuba,” readers learn this about Hemingway’s house: “To prevent the pilfering of objects, visitors are not allowed inside the house, but much can be seen through the open windows.”
WTF? The World’s Laziest Journalist doesn’t think that going to Cuba just to do some Peeping Tom activity at Hemingway’s house sounds like enough fun to rationalize the necessary expenses involved. If we can’t get Castle Cadillac Restorations to be a corporate sponsor for a barn find safari to “the Largest Antique Car Museum in the World” (AKA Cuba) then we may have to reevaluate our level of enthusiasm for seeing Hemingway’s house.
[Note from the Photo Editor: While the columnist tries to find the meaning of last year and the prospects for this year, we selected a photo of a license plate seen in the W. A. (i.e. Western Australia) for the readers to ponder.]
In “The Truest Sport,” Tome Wolfe wrote: “The North Vietnamese and the Russians packed so much artillery in around these two cities that pilots would come back saying: ‘It was like trying to fly through a rainstorm without hitting a drop.’”
Now the disk jockey will play “I’ve got a lot of traveling to do,” “On the road again,” and “Traveling man.” We have to go apply for press credentials to cover the Oscars©. Have a “Eureka!” type week.