Week of 07/27/2009

What is Apple’s Problem?
– by David Matthews 2

For years Apple has been barraging people with their pompous ads, arrogantly proclaiming how their products are splashier, brighter, safer, faster, and basically SUPERIOR to anything that comes out by any other manufacturer. And by “any other manufacturer” they usually mean Microsoft… even though Microsoft doesn’t make whole computers.

For years we have had to watch those moronic ads on television by two actors hired to portray Apple as hip, cool, and trendy, and personal computers (running on Microsoft) being dorky, clumsy, nerdish, unresponsive, bloated, deathly sick, paranoid, and otherwise lame. Insult after insult after insult being perpetrated by a bunch of paid comedians with a shrug and a smile and an Apple logo.

Of course, despite their mocking of Microsoft under the banner of “PC”, sales of Macintosh computers haven’t exactly taken over the computer market. Sure Apple can crank out a hip all-in-one-phone, as well as a portable multimedia player, but Macintosh computers are still stuck on the Island of Misfit Tech, making only modest gains in sales.

Still, Apple is keeping itself in the black, which is more than can be said for the House that Bill Gates Built.

So… what could get the First Church of Steve Jobs so upset they would unleash their legal Kraken?

Microsoft decided to fight back.

Microsoft has been running commercials exploiting the Mac’s biggest weakness: price. Sure Macs may seem slick and hip, but when every penny counts and the economy is in the toilet, price is more important than being hip. And Apple’s computers have always been far more expensive than the various personal computers on the market.

But apparently it’s an unforgivable sin to point that little flaw out. A big enough of a sin for Apple to send their legal iGoons to Redmond and DEMAND that Microsoft change their ads. Microsoft officials did admit they changed a part of their original ad, but only because Apple had dropped their Mac prices to under $2000, not because of the iGoons.

Still the followers of the iCult have been busy screaming bloody murder at Microsoft’s counterattack. They take a perverse pleasure in viciously attacking the people seen in the Microsoft ads, point out that the ads talk about hardware and not software, and hype among themselves the fallacy that Apple computers are safe and free from the threat of viruses and malware. Oh, wait, you mean they aren’t? Well don’t tell the iCultists that! They might accuse you of working for Microsoft!

Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but it is high time that this poison fruit gets plucked and tossed.

First of all, the iCult followers should be thankful that it is just Microsoft that is counter-attacking them. If the REAL PC makers wanted to jump in, then the iStuckups might feel just a little ganged-up on when companies like HP, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Dell, Sony, Acer, IBM, LG, Micro-Star, NEC, Panasonic, Sharp, and Samsung (to list just a few) joined the fray.

Remember that Microsoft doesn’t make personal computers! They only make the software and a few peripherals that unite the various brands together. When you’re attacking personal computers, you’re attacking a whole LEGION of companies and corporations that make computers.

And that, of course, is the dirty little secret behind Apple’s so-called “success”. They OWN pretty much EVERYTHING in that computer. From the case to the chips, it all has to have Apple’s approval. They own the hardware and the software and they have had a rigid control over which companies get to work with them and why.

They are, by their own business practices, elitists.

And that’s good for them in terms of quality control. You really can’t find fault with wanting to make sure that everything that goes into your brand product meets your standards.

But at the same time, look at what it has cost them. Sure they may make a computer that does great videos and pictures, but you also don’t have the variety of software distributors. Games are few and far between. Sure you can play Worlds of Warcraft and City of Heroes and even the Sims, but the cheaper games are hard to find without hitting the Internet. Sun may make a halfway-decent Office substitute, but it still doesn’t compare to the Office programs that Microsoft designed FOR Macintosh users.

And then there is the price. Sure the iCultists will tell you that you get what you pay for, but has it ever occurred to them that maybe the masses aren’t looking to buy the tech version of a Rolls Royce? Remember, money is tight, and if you need a computer and a store like Wal-Mart is willing to sell you a simple computer for under $300 and it does EVERYTHING you want it to, are you really going to pass it up?

Let’s get brutally honest here… the Apple iSheep need to get their iSticks out of their iButts. Do they really think that they can pompously trash all other computer manufacturers over and over and over again and NOT have someone speak up in response? Do they REALLY think that they have the monopoly on pretending to be hip and trendy and cool?

And that perhaps separates the two ads between Apple and Microsoft. Apple has to rely on sketch comedy between two actors with a little music box ditty running in the background. Microsoft, on the other hand, shows real people in real stores going over the various computers. They didn’t pretend to be hip or cool. They just showed people.

When all is said and done, a computer is just a TOOL. It doesn’t make you hip or trendy or cool. A bikini model holding a laptop under her arm will still look just as hot if she is holding a Fujitsu Lifebook as she would an Apple MacBook. It doesn’t really matter what BRAND you have as long as it does what you want it to do. That is the REAL secret to the success of the PC manufacturers.

Apple has some really great products. But if all they’re doing is sell a brand, then they really have no idea why they’re not the top computer manufacturer. Maybe instead of marketing an iLife, they should focus at looking at the real thing.

Week of 07/20/2009

Re-Branding the World
– by David Matthews 2

Quite recently the SciFi Channel officially changed their name.

From now on, they are known as Syfy.

Yes, it is still pronounced Sci-Fi, it just is spelled in the same way it is pronounced. And they ditched the whole “Channel” suffix.

And I’m sure you’re scratching your head and asking “WHY” they bothered to go through that whole song and dance, right?

One word: BRANDING!

Somewhere in the corporate offices of General Electric, owners of NBC Universal and the network now known as Syfy, some corporate executive was convinced that the old “SciFi Channel” name wasn’t hitting ALL of the demographics that they believe that it should. So they hired a consulting group, fired up the focus groups, did some brainstorming, and PRESTO, they came up with “Syfy”.

Or maybe they could say they ENDED UP with “Syfy”? No doubt during one of those so-called “brainstorming sessions” someone peered at their notes at how someone misspelled “SciFi” and said “Hey, how about we spell it with two Y’s?”

Once upon a time, branding was something that sort of happened by accident. Coca-Cola didn’t come up with “Coke”. McDonald’s didn’t come up with “McD’s”. Howard Johnson’s didn’t become “HoJo” on their own. The CLIENT BASE came up with these nicknames for abbreviation purposes, and they stuck. I mean, seriously, would a competent person come up with “Brangelina”?

Nowadays branding is not done by accident. It’s not left to chance by customers and critics looking to simplify or shorten long names or titles. It’s done deliberately by consulting groups designed to bring in immediate recognition.

Sometimes branding is done as part of an overall change in format. For instance when The Nashville Network became Spike TV, it was done as part of a massive change in format from a country-western-NASCAR channel to a general men-oriented network with professional wrestling and cartoons about strippers and other such testosterone-filled programming.

Re-branding also gives network executives the license to go beyond the original intent of the channel. For instance, when CourtTV became known as truTV, it allowed them to fill up the schedule with mind-numbing recreations and reality-show stupidity instead of always talking about courts and the law… because it supposedly put people to sleep. Well so does The Weather Channel, but you don’t see them suddenly air the Sports Illustrated Bikini Show. Oh, wait a minute… that’s TWC, not The Weather Channel. And it’s SI, not Sports Illustrated.

I would suspect that part of the reason why “SciFi” became “Syfy” is because the network exec have been getting away from the standard fare of science-fiction programming. They’ve started to air more horror shows, Japanese anime, sword-and-sorcery fantasy, and even professional wrestling. Now they can do these things without having to incur the wrath of science fiction purists screaming for the return of “Star Trek”.

And while some, like Richard Laermer, author of “Punk Marketing”, are fretting about this trend of “rebranding”, I think maybe we should take it up to the next level. Because let’s get brutally honest here… I seriously think a LOT of things in this country have strayed from their original intent and if they want to continue to stray, they should do so under a different name, preferably one that reflects their core nature.

Let’s start with some television networks…

MTV: “MTV” is short of “Music Television”. But they really haven’t been about MUSIC in a long, long, LONG time! They sold their soul to the reality TV producers more than ten years ago and haven’t even pretended to regret it. Only recently did they decide to air music videos again, but even that is only for the early hours of the morning. The rest of the day is chock full of regurgitated crap about self-important teens and twenty-somethings fretting away at their lives. So if they want to continue to exist, their new re-branded name should reflect it. Plus they pretend to be cool and edgy, just like the subjects of their reality regurgitations, so that should stay there as well.

So their new re-brand name should be… RealX

VH-1: “VH-1” used to be called “Video Hits One”. They were supposed to be the “mellow” version of MTV. But like MTV, they have banished their “VH” portion to the early-morning hours, interspersed with people jumping on trampolines and pretending to be cool. The rest of their day is also filled with rehashed and regurgitated reality shows. In fact they air more reality shows than MTV does.

So their new re-brand name should be… Real1

E!: Now I know you’re asking WHY re-brand a channel that already has a catchy brand in the first place? Well because “E!” isn’t about “Everything Entertainment” anymore. They too have caught the reality programming bug and have filled their schedules with mindless reality shows. But they also have a targeted audience mind. Just like MTV pretends to be cool, “E!” programs their shows with more women in mind. In fact if anything, they probably are more suited to compete against the “Oxygen” channel than against MTV. Just take “Keeping up with the Kardassians” and “Kendra” and compare them to “The Bad Girls Club” and you’d see strong similarities. So why not just go ahead and make “E!” another channel designed towards women?

So their new re-branded name should be… Estrogen

The CW: Does ANYONE know what “CW” means? Anyone? Anyone? Beuler? Beuler? Okay, the “C” stands for “CBS”, and the “W” stands for “Warner Brothers”. CBS owned the old “UPN” network and Warner Brothers owned “The WB”. The two owners merged their struggling networks into one even worse struggling network. Unfortunately their former edginess has been replaced with a “Smallville” series featuring a Clark Kent that REFUSES to become Superman, and a whole bunch of twenty-somethings pretending to be cool. Pretending, of course, being the operative word. Their new network name should be something that best describes their intentions, and something that people can instantly recognize.

So their new re-branded name should be… FluffTV

Cartoon Network: They want people to see “CN” and think “Cartoon Network”. Unfortunately they have SO badly strayed from the reservation that they have started airing LIVE ACTION movies. Their excuse is that they were based from cartoons, but they can’t even make that claim with their late night “Adult Swim” segment airing mindless LIVE ACTION comedy shows. (And I mean REALLY MINDLESS! As in someone needs to slap the programmers silly.) On the plus side, if marijuana were ever legalized, you’d know what channel would be the most watched for stoners. So if the executives at Time Warner want to continue with the trend of ignoring cartoons, they should go ahead and re-brand their channel to reflect it, and be as simple and mindlessly brain-damaged as some of their “Adult Swim” programming.

So their new re-branded name should be… Tuun

But why stop with TV networks? Let’s go ahead and re-brand other parts of society…

General Motors: GM considers themselves to be an American automaker, but like so many other automakers they are American only in pretense. A lot of their products are made from a hodgepodge of other countries and brought here to be given the GM label and thus be called “American”. Bumpers from Israel, side panels from Canada, engines made in Mexico, wipers from India, transmissions from Germany… possibly put together in America. They really took the “General” part of GM literally! So even though they have been bought out and taken over and renamed themselves back into GM, I think they need to be re-branded to reflect their nature to import their material…

So their new re-branded name should be… Mport

Ford Motor Company: The last of the “American” automakers and the only one that didn’t need a bailout which didn’t really bail them out. Birthplace of the assembly line and the preferred vehicle for down-home rednecks and other members of conservative America. Their re-branding should be simple and easy to comprehend for their customer base.

So their new re-branded name should be… Frd

Wall Street: So named because of its location in New York City, this kingdom of buying and selling, where fear is fortune and fortune is fleeting, is in serious need of re-branding. Trading isn’t done in person anymore. A lot of it is done electronically from various places around the world. And corruption has been so rampant that it takes out-and-out instances like Bernie Madoff for someone to take notice. Therefore the whole financial industry needs to be re-branded and renamed into something that reflects its mercenary nature.

So their new re-branded name should be… 4Sale

Las Vegas: Once upon a time, Las Vegas was THE king of gambling. Once upon a time. Now, of course, we have Reno, we have Atlantic City, and we have various Indian casinos all across the country. People don’t need to go to Vegas to get their game on. They sometimes just need a computer. Or even just a PlayStation 3. No, I’m not kidding about that. But Vegas still is king of the bling, king of the gaudy displays of excess and wealth. They thrive on wealth and live off the wealthy. They should set themselves apart not just by geography but also by nature.

So their new re-branded name should be… Ka-shing!

New York: Okay, New York THE STATE is one thing… but do we really have to have a city named the same way? New York, New York? Granted Frank Sinatra can make it work, but he was the only one who could! Liza Minnelli, MAYBE. So if we’re going to re-brand in the same way that we’re re-branding everything else, let’s give the city something new and unique.

So their new re-branded name should be… EnWySee

The Roman Catholic Church: Hey, here’s a church that has had two thousand years of secrets that they have mostly kept under wraps. Everything from shuffling around pedo-priests to supporting human atrocities. And did you know that for many centuries now the Catholic Church has had the largest collection of pornography in the world? It’s true! These guys make Larry Flynt and Bob Guccione look like a bunch of rank amateurs. And of course everyone wants to sue them for their money. So why not escape the stigma of the past and re-brand for the future?

So their new re-branded name should be… Big Christ Closets

Finally we get to the big ones…

The Democratic Party: This is a party that has really held on over the years by a series of loose threads attached to fifty-ton weights known as Unions, Lawyers, and Special Interests. They were disorganized, disjointed, and the only thing going for them was that they were not Republicans, but even that was subject to change. Plus it’s a little hard to say that you’re the “Democratic” Party when you often support socialist and oligarchic mentalities. This is a party that really needs to get out of the old Jeffersonian days and get with the here and now. They need to capitalize on their strengths… how few there are…

So their new re-branded name should be… Ope

Sounds strange, I know, but think about it… add an “H” and you get Hope, which has been their best selling point this past election. Add an “N” at the end and you get “Open”, as in open-minded, which is what they like to think they have. And with this new brand name they’re no longer tied down to this illusion of theirs that they support democracy. They can go ahead and back all the dictators and communists to their heart’s content.

The Republican Party: The ORIGINAL Republican Party, the one that referred to itself as the “GRAND OLD Party”, freed the slaves and helped the poor. Obviously those aren’t on top of the list of the CURRENT members of the GOP. I mean, have you SEEN the Republicans of late? They’re corrupt, they’re self-righteous, they’re self-serving, and every time they get into power they have this nasty trend to re-enslave people either through oil or banks. And when they’re not in power they become such a bunch of pathetic little prissy WHINERS! I mean, you can’t have a simple election without them screaming “VOTE FRAUD”. They even complain about how the voting is done on “American Idol”! Plus they LOVE to suck up to the fundamentalist extremists… at least when the extremists aren’t killing and bombing people… which is yet another group of enslaved masses they take pride in, even if in most instances it’s voluntary.

So let’s start with the fact that there is nothing GRAND about them anymore. The only thing about them that is GRAND is the number of GRANDS that it takes for people to get their attention. You know, one GRAND gets you the rubber chicken dinner, five GRAND gets you a handshake, and fifty GRAND gets you two minutes of conversation that they may or may not pay attention to. And OLD? Nobody wants to be seen as OLD! Especially not a party that is in desperate fear of going the way of the very Whigs that they replaced.

Plus… Republicans support a Republic. Republic? REPUBLIC? Who sees themselves as a REPUBLIC anymore? They don’t! They keep on talking about DEMOCRACY as if it’s some sort of panacea for the ills of the world! They probably would start calling themselves DEMOCRATS if not for the fact that it was first taken by those Ope folks.

Okay, so let’s get the Republicans a new brand name that reflects their strengths. A brand name that reflects their claims of spiritual devotion, their demand for unquestionable obedience, and their determination to stay the course even if that course leads to death and destruction! Plus they can invoke it as a universal denial of any future accusations they may have to deal with.

So their new brand name should be… GodNo!

There! Now they can move on into the 21^st Century with a catchy brand name that reflects their nature!

Wow, I can see why corporations like doing this stuff.

Week of 07/13/2009

The Mistakes of Political Affairs
– by David Matthews 2

Funny how it’s been ten years since headline stories of hypocritical politicians caught in their wanderlust were catching our attention. Ten years since we heard talk of impeachments and resignations and saucy details of political peccadilloes.

So why haven’t we learned anything from them?

Seriously, why haven’t we learned the lessons of these affairs of the political heart by now? You’d think that after all of the coverage in the past ten years about hypocritical politicians that either we’d wise up about them or the hypocritical politicians would.

If anything, they’ve gotten worse and weirder. Anonymous encounters in an airport men’s room? Sexting with male interns? Literally vanishing off the face of the earth for some weekend nookie in another country? Do we actually have to wait for the circus midgets to get brought in before we start putting two and two together?

Part of the problem, of course, is that we continually fall into the same traps. We get all shocked and outraged that YET ANOTHER politician is caught with his or her pants down. We get all in a huff because they have been caught in a LIE about themselves and their stances.

And then… NOTHING! We get all hot and bothered about it and then just let it go until the next philandering hypocrite comes along and we start the cycle all over again.

Maybe that’s why conservatives have such a mad-hate for evolution… they really don’t want us to know any better about this stuff! They don’t want us to mentally evolve past this.

Well, let’s take the time to go over some of those mistakes and maybe that will inspire us to try to do something different.

Mistake #1: We beatify the betrayed spouse. “Poor woman” we say. We actually feel sorry for her, don’t we?

Why?

I know this comes off as incredibly insensitive, but why to we automatically turn the non-cheating party into saints? How do we know they didn’t have a hand in creating the mess?

Maybe she’s a hypersensitive parent with a child-fetish, playing the role of “mommy” 24/7. Maybe she is wrapped up with her own career and ambitions and has to actually schedule in time where she pretends to be the loving spouse. Maybe she berates him constantly away from the cameras and away from the prying eyes. Hey TLC’s “Jon and Kate” aren’t the only ones in America that have an emotionally-castrating relationship.

Maybe their marriage is or has become just an arrangement of convenience. It doesn’t have to START out as one. Maybe they WERE loving and caring to each other once upon a time, but then agreed to stay together for the kids, or for prestige, or because the illusion just fits in with their various projects.

Maybe, just maybe, those dreaded press conferences where she’s standing there stoically by her spouse as he publicly confesses his sins is done so at HER behest to further dig at her philandering husband and make him that much more of a heel. If she was the one that drove him into the arms of another through her mechanizations, then standing there by his side, pretending to be the “poor victim”, is yet another careful attack on his manhood and proof that SHE is the dominant one in the paring.

Either way, folks, don’t automatically presume that she is either innocent or the “helpless victim”.

Mistake #2: Is this love that I’m feeling? Lust and love may have a few things in common but that does not mean that they are interchangeable. It could very well be that the person of infatuation is in love with that cheating heart. That doesn’t mean that the feeling is mutual, though. Just because he’s in someone else’s bed doesn’t mean that he is in love with that other woman.

Having an affair is NOT about looking for a new spouse. Having an affair is about fulfilling a need that is not being met in the current relationship. Cheating hearts are very greedy people. They want to have their cake and eat it too.

Mistake #3: Fixating on the details! Do we REALLY need to know all of the dirty low-down details of how they conducted their affairs? Seriously. WHY?

You tell me which is more relevant to the subject:

A - That the cheating heart family values hypocrite had NUMEROUS affairs on his or her spouse while at the same time condemning those that fail to meet their personal standards.

OR…

B - That the cheating heart family values hypocrite had a total of FIVE HUNDRED encounters with at least TEN different people, including two former beauty queens, one current beauty queen, two lobbyists, a next-door neighbor, someone they met at the airport, and a circus midget, and have explicit and detailed accounts of EVERY ONE of those five hundred encounters, including the use of whips, dips, chains, clamps, feather boas, and a couple of accessories not even thought of using in that way since Malcom McDowell in the movie “Caligula”.

When a politician or their acolytes and myrmidons are willing to provide WAY too much information about the scandal, it’s not done to “clear the air”. It’s done to overwhelm the senses of the masses and to get them to FORGET about what this is really all about, which is the HYPOCRISY of it all!

And last, but certainly not least, the biggest of political mistakes that we commit in these situations…

Mistake #4: WE HYPOCRITIZE OURSELVES! Let’s get brutally honest here… we CODDLE these hypocrites when their lies and their double-standards are exposed!

We FORGIVE them when they admit to their hypocrisy! We let them keep their jobs when they decide to not hold themselves to the standards they pompously judge US by!

These politicians get on their soapboxes and they talk about how America has become this moral cesspool because of the lack of “family values”. And their lemming supporters nod their heads like good Pavlovian dogs and agree with him. These politicians get elected and re-elected on that talk. They get laws and regulations and policies enacted based ON that talk about morality and “family values”. They turn their pompous judgmental eyes towards the movies and TV and video games and the Internet and judge them EN MASSE to be guilty based ON that talk.

And all the while, politicians like South Carolina Governor Mark Stanford and Senator John Ensign are doing the very things that they publicly condemn. And when they are exposed for what they really are, what happens?

WE FORGIVE THEM!

We EXPECT them to do the “right thing” on their own. We EXPECT them to punish THEMSELVES for their hypocrisy. We EXPECT them to resign on their own.

But if they don’t value their marriages, why should we EXPECT them to do the right thing on ANYTHING?

What happens when these hypocrites are exposed for what they are and they REFUSE to hold themselves to the same standards they judge the rest of the world by? What do we do when that happens?

NOTHING!

We will actually FORGIVE THEM for their hypocrisy! We will not hound them at every corner and crevice like they would have done TO US. We will not PROSECUTE them under any laws on the books that would apply in that situation as would be done TO US. We will not hold them to ANY KIND of accountability for their actions as they would have done TO US.

We will, instead, re-elect them if they so choose to run for re-election. We will let them stay in office and stay in power and let them continue to judge the rest of the world by standards that THEY THEMSELVES refuse to uphold.

And it is here, at this point, that we become the willing accomplices to the crime after-the-fact. We pompously proclaim that a certain action is wrong, that in some cases even violate some arcane law on the books that we think still need to be enforced, and yet we FAIL to push for that enforcement when it comes to our political leaders, be they governors, presidents, or even the city mayor. We allow the perpetrator to prosper and profit from their act. We let them get away with it, no different than helping a bank robber escape from the police.

We FORGIVE them… because we expect them to forgive us if the situation was reversed.

But in the meantime, what does that say about those “morals” and “values” that we supposedly want imposed in society? Doesn’t that DE-VALUE those concepts?

It does.

And here’s the clincher: the politicians KNOW THIS! They do! They know that while you talk the talk about values and morals and ethics, that you would rather keep a corrupt SOB in office than lose your precious special interest programs.

So there is no incentive for them to do better. They know that even if they are caught that they can smooth things over and you will forgive them and they can go on doing what they’ve been doing.

Let’s get brutally honest here… when it comes to lying cheating no-good rotten-to-the-core hypocritical politicians, the biggest mistake made is not on their part, but on our own! It’s not that they cheat or even that they were caught cheating, but that we don’t hold them to the very standards they complain about and campaign under! We expect more from them, but we don’t want to hold them to it.

This is all just a game to the politicians. Every cause they claim to champion, every crusade they publicly support, every soapbox and rubber-chicken speech they make, all of it is nothing more than window dressing. It’s a front to disguise their true intentions. The only way they will do anything different than before is when their constituents insist upon it. After all, if you don’t care about it enough to bring in people that truly reflect what you believe in, why should they be any different?

Week of 07/06/2009

America’s Newest Political Ayatollah
– by David Matthews 2

The news came suddenly and without warning on the day before America would celebrate its annual day of independence. America is poised to get a brand-new self-appointed ayatollah...

But first that person must step down as governor of Alaska.

Yes, Alaska’s governor and former Vice-Presidential contender Sarah Palin announced on June 3^rd that she would not only NOT be running for re-election in 2010, but she would be stepping down from office at the end of the month and swearing in the lieutenant-governor to take her place.

In what has been considered typical Palin fashion, the governor’s reasons why she has taken such a drastic measure has left many either wanting more information or trying to speculate her ulterior goals. And even when such information has been suggested by those close to Palin, it still did not answer the essential questions like WHY. Why did she decide to drop out NOW instead of serving up her term and leaving in 2011?

She said that she didn’t want to be a “lame duck” governor, but that is essentially what she became once she made the announcement! From now until she officially steps down, she is a “lame duck” governor!

Is she afraid that she would lose in a re-election? Then don’t run for re-election. It’s that simple. Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis did that after his failed run in 1988. He left and retreated to Hawaii so that the voters couldn’t vote him out of office, but he DID make sure to finish his term first.

Is she leaving now so she can run for president in 2012? Quitting now before her first term in office is over with is really one of the WORST ways to show leadership for a higher post. Let’s suppose this country was foolish enough to actually elect her… hey, we DID elect a Texas Doofus so it is possible to prove HL Mencken right for a second time… what would stop her from stepping down amidst an international threat? North Korea could launch more missiles, oil prices could spike, Osama bin Laden could release another tape, Venezuela Strongman Hugo Chavez could call her an empty-headed twit… would she quit if faced with that kind of pressure? She’s demonstrated that she could do just that. You don’t think this won’t be used against her? If you think so then you’re as deluded as she is.

But it is what she has alluded to doing after she leaves at the end of July that shows her true intentions. She has posted on social websites that she is looking at working on, in her own words, “uniting the country”. She says it is a “higher calling”. She apparently thinks it is her newfound mission in life to spread the “cause” and to get more people like her elected to public office. She thinks she can be the next Ollie North or the next Chuck Norris or the next Rush Limbaugh. She apparently sees herself as a “uniter” in the same vein as our previous President. Her attorney, on the other hand, has publicly threatened to take legal action against anyone and everyone that DARES to question Palin. And from recent news accounts that apparently includes every blogger and news source that publishes unflattering articles about her.

That is not the action of a “uniter”. That is the self-righteous self-serving self-important vindictive tantrums of a narcissist.

Let’s get brutally honest here… by all indications, Sarah Palin is appointing herself to be America’s newest political ayatollah. She’s had a taste of the conservative circles, going out on tours and hearing the cultish cheers of the myrmidons, and she apparently wants more.

Of course it should be pointed out that America’s FIRST ayatollah, disgraced Alabama judge Roy Moore, is still around. In fact he’s trying yet again to run for governor of that state. He may even get it if the conservatives continue to get more and more divorced from reality. Apparently the exiting governor of Alaska thinks that she can do better than Moore.

What makes Palin even more dangerous than Moore, though, is her apparent increasing intolerance for criticism, especially noted by her recent reaction to a bad joke told by late night TV show host David Letterman and her unapologetic accusation of Letterman being a sex offender. Those are the actions of an extremist, not those of someone wanting to “unite” a nation.

The really sad part is that Palin has sold herself to the idea that she is a leader of the conservative ideal. She does not realize that she is not its leader. She is its defective product. She is the end result of years upon years of unchecked arrogance, disjointed concepts, and delusions that cannot be matched with real-world actions. And combined with parental hysteria, a generous dose of narcissism, and a perpetually fraudulent whine of persecution, and you have all the makings of an evangelical extremist.

As her own lame-duck governor, Sarah Palin is in desperate need of a reality check. But in typical neo-conservative fashion, she is doing everything in her power to make sure that it is not delivered. She refuses to be judged by the voters, by the media, by her political peers, or by history. She thinks that she is being unpredictable, but in reality she is proving to be unreliable. She thinks she is better than the old guard when she is proving to be far worse. She wants to be a leader but it still hasn’t registered in her mind that you cannot be both a “maverick” and a leader.

She is doing one thing right, though. She has become a symbol of the conservative/neo-conservative movement. It just happens to be the symbol that the movement DESERVES, not what it aspires.