Week of 10/31/2011

Top 5 Reasons Why Comic-Book Obama is Better Than Real-World Obama
– by David Matthews 2

I had to dig through a comic collection to find it… but there it was…

Barack Obama as Superman.

No, seriously.

DC Comics mini-series “Final Crisis” Issue #7 has the first African-American President wearing the red-and-blue tights and cape of Superman. Writer Grant Morrison even confirmed that this alternate-reality “last son of Krypton” was in fact based on Barack Obama following the President’s comedic feedback of public criticism about him. Obama had joked that he actually “sent to Earth by his father Jor-El”, and Morrison worked with Tom Nguyen to turn that into a brief comic book fantasy.

Of course they weren’t the only ones to show Obama in the comics. Obama would later appear in the “normal” DC Universe asking Superman for help in dealing with an Earth-shattering crisis. He would also appear in other comics, including Marvel Comic’s “Amazing Spider-Man”, and Image Comic’s “Savage Dragon”. He would even appear in the fan-made comic series “City of Comic Creators Compendium” Issue #5, in a story written by yours truly.

Obviously this isn’t the first time that a real-world political figure would appear in the world of comics. There have been several over the years, including, of course, Captain America’s debut issue where he is on the cover punching Adolf Hitler right in the jaw. Bill Clinton and his wife spoke at the funeral of Superman. Ronald Reagan barred superheroes from operating in “Legends”.

Most of the time, comic book versions of political figures are seen as either equal to or lesser than their real-life counterparts. And the less seen of them, the better. George W. Bush wasn’t even seen in the DC Universe at all as President. The man sitting in the Oval Office during much of that time was none other than… of all people… Lex Luthor. And his appearance in the world of Marvel was… well, let’s just say “less than presidential”.

But in looking at “Comic-Book Obama” versus the real world, I’ve come to the conclusion that we got the wrong version. We should have gotten the comic book version and left the real-world version to the world of comics.

Because let’s get brutally honest here… Obama’s people have created this mythos about him as being so great that when it is compared to the things that he’s actually done, his own record falls painfully short. Here are some not-so-serious reasons why the comic book version is better than the real one:

Number 5: A One-Superman-Army! - A super-powered Obama wouldn’t need to put armed forces in harm’s way. Iran causing trouble? Zip! Done. Looking for Bin Laden? Zip! Found him and moved him to Gitmo. North Korea riling up? Zip! Guns have been turned into farm tools. Think of the billions of dollars that would be saved! Super-powered Obama would have rightly earned his Nobel Prize in the same time that the Nobel Committee fretted about giving Real-world Obama his.

Number 4: No Political Insurrection! - Comic-Book Obama doesn’t have to worry about a Congress sabotaging his programs at every corner. There’s no talk about filibusters or brokering deals in Comic-Book world. Need a bill passed? Done! There is no wrangling about debt or taxes.

Number 3: REAL Enemies! - Comic-Book Obama doesn’t have to worry about talk of impeachment or slanderous claims of being born in another country like Real-World Obama has to worry about. Instead, Comic-Book Obama has to worry about super-villains and techno-savvy armies like the Fifth Column. Misery in the world? Oh, it’s not the fault of Wall Street; it’s actually because of some ancient Norse deity looking to bring about the end of the world.

Number 2: FAR Better Scandals! - Never mind Solyndra; how about Comic-Book Obama fist-bumping Spider-Man? You know, that “menace” you read about all the time in the Daily Bugle. Or how about giving Defense deals to LexCorp, or to that lush Tony Stark over at Stark Enterprises? Oh, and what’s with all of those top-secret classified agencies? Project Cadmus and their clone-making system would certainly raise far more eyebrows than “Cap-and-Trade”. And how about that huge United Nations intelligence agency with the hovering aircraft carrier?

And the Number 1 not-so-serious reason why we should have gotten Comic-Book Obama instead of the Real-World version…

He’d Actually Make The Choices! - Leaders in comic books don’t promise the world and then fail to deliver. They don’t promise “change” and then reinforce the status quo. If they’re in a position to make a decision, they make it. And they’d actually be the ones to make the decisions instead of blindly following their advisors. Not to mention if they make the wrong decisions, then you’d know they were under the influence of some demonic being or replaced by a lookalike robot.

Now obviously comic book writers (including yours truly) have to take certain liberties when it comes to portraying politicians; that’s why it’s called “fiction”. But when that fiction ends up doing a better job than the source material, you really have to wonder if it’s time to look for better material.

Week of 10/24/2011

Capitalism’s Piss-Poor Champions
– by David Matthews 2

One of the things about defending freedoms in America is that the defenders really don’t get to choose their clients. Defending freedoms mean you have to, in all likelihood, defend things that you would rather not, and sometimes people that you would rather not.

Do you think the attorneys in the American Civil Liberties Union want to defend a neo-Nazi group marching in the street or homeless people with no place to go? Do you think they want to defend the owner of an adult novelty store or the owners of a website where they share their love of S&M? It’s probably not high on their individual bucket lists, and the group itself certainly doesn’t use it as their advertisement. Instead, what they promote is that they defend something greater than their clients… namely freedom, and the civil rights of all citizens, even the ones they personally would not want to associate with.

The same, however, cannot be said about capitalism.

The people that consciously refuse to accept the message of the Wall Street protesters (which apparently has gone global now) are trying to make the protests be about capitalism itself. They use it to mock the protesters and accuse them of hypocrisy, since they need to use the very system to purchase their protest items and to blog about their arrests.

But while there are some that are using the protests to attack capitalism itself, that doesn’t mean all of the “Occupy” protesters are anti-capitalism; any more so than you could accuse the whole Tea Party crowd of being racists just because some of them fly Confederate flags and they all seem to have a seething hatred over who is living in the White House.

Unfortunately for those that have chosen profits over people, this is not a false characterization that they should be embracing. Making this argument be about capitalism itself actually serves as nothing short of an insult to the very system they claim to defend.

For starters, it presupposes that what we’ve been seeing these past few years IS capitalism at its best.

You tell me… when you look up capitalism in the dictionary, is there any reference to federally-funded bailouts? I don’t seem to recall anywhere in the dictionaries that I use that there is a part in there that mentions that government serves to bail out reckless companies. In fact, the definitions I see often talk about an “unregulated market”, which means no government involvement. So how is it that bailing out “Too Big To Fail” with hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars on loan from foreign nations be considered capitalism?

Speaking of which, would the very idea of any business being considered “Too Big To Fail” fit in anyone’s definition of capitalism? Think of all of the businesses that have come and gone over the generations. Would a true supporter of capitalism actually say that any of those businesses that have collapsed need to be supported and sustained with taxpayer money even to the detriment of a nation because it is “Too Big To Fail”?

Is bribery capitalism? We’re finding out that so-called “credit rating services” were giving favored ratings to financial schemes that they knew were nothing more than glorified houses of cards. And they were doing so because they would get bonuses to that effect. When you teach your children about capitalism, do you also teach them that cheating and bribery are an essential part of it?

Is perjury capitalism? There are banks that have signed foreclosure petitions, legal documents, that they know they have no claim to. That’s perjury; a criminal act. We actually impeached a sitting President of the United States for that. So when you send your children to business school to know about capitalism, are they taught how to break the law in the course of doing business?

Is theft-by-government capitalism? Developers have long used the power of local government through eminent domain to take private property of others for their own gain, and in at least one instance for the benefit of a rival business. So when you teach capitalism to someone from another country that never experienced it, do you point out that capitalism allows legalized stealing of someone else’s property for your own gain?

I’m sure the answer to all of those above question is “no”. No, I’m sure that you would be very adamant about saying that capitalism is not about stealing or bribery or theft or bailouts or breaking the law.

Nor would you want people to look at the social and economic devastation that has been caused these past three years because of abuses of those in Wall Street. You wouldn’t want people to see the neighborhoods turned into ghost towns through rampant foreclosures. You wouldn’t want people to hear about the escalating crime sprees caused by those out of work and desperate to do anything to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. You wouldn’t want them to hear about the abject misery caused by the lack of jobs, the lack of businesses, and the continued degradation of whole communities by the lack of tax revenue as a result of the lost jobs and the lost businesses. And all of this is going on while those in the top percentage of the income pile are raking in record profits, getting record bonuses, and still complaining endlessly like spoiled children about their “sorry” state of affairs.

No, you wouldn’t want people to think about any of those things when you tell them about capitalism.

And yet let’s get brutally honest here… that is precisely what you are doing when you make this subject be about capitalism. You are putting all of these things on a pedestal for people to see, warts and all, and then expecting everyone to just see what you want them to see and ignore the rest. You are not doing yourself or capitalism any favors when you are doing that.

What America has been going through for the past decade or so is nothing short of criminal. Fraud, corruption, cronyism, misrepresentation… there is a word for what we’ve been going through and it is not “capitalism”. It is called Raubwirtschaft, which is German for “plunder economy”.

If you’re going to defend capitalism and prop it up as the end-all-be-all for society, then you need to admit that what we’ve been going through is not it. The system that has been set up, the system that people are protesting up and down North America, and in fact around the world now, is not capitalism! It is a perversion of the very idea. What is being protested is what our system has become, which is a predatory system. A system of plunder and graft.

So if you’re going to continue to sit in willing ignorance and stupidity over what the protesters are really protesting over, you’d better make sure that you know what you’re really propping up and defending. Certainly if you want to carry on like you’re superior to those protesters, you better be able to prove it.

Week of 10/17/2011

Mormons Versus Morons
– by David Matthews 2

There’s an old saying that “You can’t fix stupid.” And boy do we seem to have a lot of it.

And it probably should be no surprise that “stupid” seems to appear when the subject turns to religion or politics, or usually both. Remember former Governor Jesse Ventura’s line about religion being a crutch for the weak-minded? That gets re-validated every time “stupid” makes an appearance.

So here we are waist-deep in yet another presidential sludge-fest and the name that pops up again is former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, aka “Voice of Reason for the Unreasonable”. Amongst the things that certain GOP fanatics hate about Romney is the fact that the state that delivered the first Roman Catholic President in the form of John Kennedy, the state that was first colonized by Puritans, somehow managed to elect Romney as governor even though he is… brace yourself now.. a Mormon!

Yes, we are back to this again.

Reverend Robert Jeffress, a prominent Dallas minister and diehard supporter of Texas Governor Rick Perry, has been making a name for himself in the media going around telling anyone willing to listen to him or stick his face in front of a TV camera that Mormonism is “a cult”, and that Romney is “not a Christian”.

Bear in mind that Jeffress doesn’t just single out Mormons. He apparently had some choice words about Roman Catholics last year, accusing the religion from which all western Christian derivations come from (including, I should point out, his own) as being, in his own words, “the bridge between Satan and man.” Yes, he also thinks Roman Catholics are a “cult”. Remember, ALL religious sects of Christianity, including the Baptists, came from a split from the Roman Catholic Church. So what does that say about your faith, Reverend, since yours also came from that “Babylonian cult”? Have you ever known of good fruit to sprout from a bad tree?

But he’s not the only one with that criticism. He’s just the latest in a long line of self-important people that take it upon themselves to serve as judge, jury, and chief condemner of all faiths not their own. Bryan Fisher of the American Family Association pompously declares that the First Amendment was “never intended” to apply to what he deems to be “non-Christians”, and therefore does not apply to Mormons.

No, I am not making this up. You can hear their diatribes online if you don’t believe me. The sheer ignorance, arrogance, and out-and-out stupidity of these self-important people is only eclipsed by the fact that there are others that do follow them and base their opinions on those pontifications.

Of course in the ultimate scheme of things, these self-righteous self-serving self-important braggarts are really doing themselves a disservice. The problem is that this realization often comes after the damage is already done.

But a funny thing happened in the meanwhile… while the talking heads started to jabber on and on about whether or not Rick Perry should disavow his loyal soothsayer, some new commercials began appearing between news segments. They are simple, disarming, commercials featuring ordinary people talking about how they have boring, ordinary lives, and then at the end you find out that these people of many races and ethnicities are also Mormons. Yes, the Mormon Church paid a pretty penny for these commercials, and they work, because they seem to counter the sting of the venom being sprayed by vipers like Jeffress and Fisher quite nicely.

Now… should Governor Perry “disown” Jeffress, like then-candidate Barack Obama was pressured to do with his bombastic minister, Jeremiah Wright, four years ago? Idiots that play the “gotcha game” certainly would demand it, but this commentator thinks that it would be too little and too late. It didn’t matter if Obama “disowned” Wright or fought to defend him… the conservatives and neo-conservatives still considered the connection to be fair game and they attacked Obama mercilessly because of it. So why should Perry do the same when there is absolutely nothing to gain from doing it?

Let’s get brutally honest here… Jeffress and his ilk may be political douchebags, but they also represent a very vocal segment that make up the base of the GOP. They were the ones that convinced Perry that he should run for the White House in the first place; it would be sheer stupidity to then “disown” that group just because their ignorance is showing like a senile grandfather without his pants.

In fact, rather than trying to push these political senile grandfathers without pants away, we need to recognize that these people not only exist, but they happen to vote. And they vote more frequently than the bulk of the voting populace! While most of you are coming up with excuses why you’re not going to vote, they’re already at the ballot box, picking candidates that both reflect their beliefs and would force all of us to adhere to them. If you’re wondering why there’s such a great disconnect between the politicians and the people they claim to represent, you may want to look at who’s been doing the voting on a regular basis. In all likelihood, it’s the people who listen to Jeffress and Fisher.

No, you can’t fix stupid. But you can prove that the rest of us aren’t the same way.

Week of 10/10/2011

The Willfully Ignorant Are Willing Idiots
– by David Matthews 2

“You’re saying words but all I hear is crazy!”

No truer statement can be said about the recent social schizophrenia than can be expressed by a couple of reviewers from That-Guy-With-the-Glasses-dot-com.

You have a group of people out there protesting the status quo. They’re carrying signs, some of them are wearing costumes, and they complain about the political system and the fact that they’re not being represented by the two dominant political parties. They’re furious about the bank bailouts and how they feel they’re getting disenfranchised by the system and how the “mainstream media” is saying nothing about them. They’re not all there for the same reason, but they all have one thing in common: they don’t like what’s going on.

Now if you’re thinking that I’m talking about the current “Occupy Wall Street” protesters, well you would be wrong. I’m actually referring to a different group of people that were doing protests all their own two years ago. You may have heard of them. They called themselves the “Tea Party Movement”.

Of course it didn’t take long for that group to get co-opted by political action committees and a certain cable news network and get seduced by politicians from one certain political party. But, for a brief and shining time, they really were what they claimed to be. They really were the voice of the politically discontent.

So now we have a new bunch of protesters that are doing the same thing. Again, people carrying signs, wearing costumes, complaining about the political system and of being disenfranchised. Again, they’re not all there for the same reason but they all are there to say that they don’t like what’s going on.

Now you would think that the people of the first protest group would at least sympathize with the people of the second. You’d think that they would recognize that they have plenty of things in common. Bailouts were bad, people are getting screwed over, and that most people are being disenfranchised by the political system.

Instead, what are the OWS people hearing?

“They’re not organized. They don’t have a message. They don’t know what they want. They just represent a small extreme fraction of the American people. They’re just long-haired hippies that haven’t taken showers. They hate freedom. They hate capitalism. They hate money. They should just get a job. Stop complaining. Stop whining.”

You ignorant sluts.

I’m sorry… that’s actually an insult to real ignorant sluts. At least real ignorant sluts are willing to try new things so they won’t be so ignorant.

I’m not surprised that it took three weeks for the media to finally recognize that the Wall Street protesters are around, especially when the movement started to spread to other cities. Nor should I be surprised to see that the air-fluffed ego-driven media are eager to recite the “They don’t know what they want” propaganda speech. Take a look at who pays for their news programs and you’ll see the very financial institutions that are being protested.

It is no big secret that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp owns not only FoxNews but also the Wall Street Journal. But do you know what else they own that comes with the Wall Street Journal? The Dow Jones. Yes, they are very much a part of the very institution being protested; the very institution that got huge stinking bailouts; and the very institution that the political system has been bending over backwards to appease and have been convinced were far more important than the American people themselves.

Suddenly the vitriol against the OWS protesters by the Ministry of Truth has a purpose. When blowhards like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly mock and attack the protesters, they’re protecting their own bosses. They have a vested interest in making sure that the financial institutions are left alone to continue to do the very things that pays their salaries.

The same goes for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who whines like a spoiled bitch about fictional “struggling” Wall Street workers. He has a whole cable business channel under his own name to protect; since anything that effects Wall Street also effects his own bottom line. Seriously, Mister Mayor? Forty-thousand-dollar Wall Street executives? Maybe in the 1970’s.

But what truly surprises and disgusts this commentator is not the hatchet job being run by the media, but rather the willful ignorance being spewed by the great unwashed on this subject. The people that are echoing the propaganda coming from the media and the Ministry of Truth and are dismissing the real pain being felt by millions of their own neighbors. The same people that claimed that the “Tea Party Movement” represents “the silent majority” are now hypocritically bashing the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters for using the very same reasons that brought them out in protest two years ago.

From the comments they post in Facebook and the letters they send to newspapers, it’s clear that these people aren’t just ignorant… but willfully so. They intentionally keep themselves in the dark about what the OWS protesters are about and instead are reciting the crafted talking points handed to them by the biased corporate-owned media.

Let’s get brutally honest here… it’s not that the Occupy Wall Street protesters don’t have a message. It is that you do not W-A-N-T to know their message!

I am not a member of the Occupy Wall Street group. I have nothing to do with them, but even from my perspective, looking through the biased mirror of the media, I can see what they want as plain as day. I can see what they are protesting. I can see what they are complaining about.

They are complaining about the very predatory environment that “Too Big To Fail” and Big Business have been using to systematically pilfer and destroy America. They are complaining about the banks that get bailed out through our tax dollars and then turn our neighborhoods into ghost towns. The same banks that are now imposing fees on top of fees on the very customers that will be paying for their bailouts for the next few generations. The same banks that are in negotiations with our government to receive “Get Out Of Jail Forever” cards for their criminally abusive handling of foreclosures.

Go ahead and change banks… if you can find one that hasn’t been taken over by “Too Big To Fail” just yet, either through merger or through the FDIC. But you have no control over the notice that you get about your mortgage being picked up by “Too Big To Fail”. You either have to pay it off on the spot or else suck it up. That in and of itself is a good reason to protest.

Corporate America sits on two trillion dollars of money from the Federal Reserve. That is money that is supposed to create jobs. Instead it’s collecting interest and feeding profit margins. They use their friends in the GOP to insist that sustaining Bush-Era tax breaks would be used to create jobs, only to then say that the economy is just “too risky” to live up to those promises. (This, by the way, also comes from people that boast that they are “risk-takers”.)

Check your health insurance premiums of late? They’ve gone up, haven’t they? Corporate America wants you to blame so-called “Obamacare”, but in truth this fiscal shakedown is pure corporate greed. The same corporate greed that allowed them to manipulate the reform legislation to their fiscal advantage, and to force Americans to sign up with their services, whether they can afford to or not. “Socialism”, you say? No, that’s actually fascism. Thank you for showing just how badly you failed at high school civics.

The price of basic essentials like energy and food go up and down based not on physical supply-and-demand, as was originally the case, but rather on the irrational futures speculation of those in Wall Street. The price of gasoline goes up and down based on whether or not a Saudi sheik stubs his toe, or if something bad is said about the State of Texas, or if an ill wind blows towards the Gulf of Mexico. And how did it get this way? Because Wall Street went to K-Street and told Washington to give them this power, supposedly to “limit” the marketplace abuses.

This is what the Occupy Wall Street people are protesting about, and where else are they supposed to turn to? Turn to their representatives in Congress? Those two-faced Januses listen to K-Street, not Main Street. And besides, weren’t the so-called “Tea Party Movement” people complaining about that as well? Oh, that’s right, that was before it became a special interest group all its own, with its own GOP caucus and their favorite channel that just happens to be owned by the same company that owns a huge part of Wall Street.

The people that I hear that support the Occupy Wall Street group each have various different reasons to protest. Some are protesting greed. Some are protesting animal testing. Some are protesting the outsourcing of jobs overseas. Yeah, some are even protesting the corporate system itself. It’s a little hard to get a consolidated message from all of those groups, and that is no different than what the original “Tea Party Movement” was like in their beginning. That protest group had anti-tax supporters, libertarians, conservatives, neo-conservatives, theo-conservatives, all complaining about the status quo in Washington. They too couldn’t get a consolidated message out at first, other than to say that they were mad as hell and they weren’t going to take it anymore.

By the way, some of America’s founding fathers weren’t happy with Big Money muscling their way in America either. Thomas Jefferson said in a letter to John Taylor in May of 1816 that he considered “that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale”.

It’s one thing to not know the message. It’s another thing entirely to not want to know the message and then assert that there is no message, especially when it is right in front of people all this time. That’s not just “crazy”; that’s idiotic. Then you can’t just claim to be an “innocent bystander”… then you actually become part of the problem.

Week of 10/03/2011

ADHDGOP
– by David Matthews 2

So here we are, still months away from the first primary or caucus, still in that glorified “fantasy league” phase of the over-extended 2012 campaign season, and it seems that the most vocal part of the GOP just can’t seem to figure out who they want to support to take on President Barack Obama.

Yes, the field of presidential contenders is pretty thick. A whole bunch of people think they can beat Obama. The problem is that there is this eternal call for other people to join in. First it’s Donald Trump, who wisely decides he can be a better pain on NBC than in DC. Then it’s Michelle Bachman, who follows through and then can’t get her geography right. Then it’s Texas Governor Rick Perry, who joins in after Rush Limbaugh pesters him to. Now the “call” is going out to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who apparently is doing the smartest thing in the world, which is to say “no”; although rumors are circulating that he may consider running after all. And, of course, still lurking in the corner of the media is former Governor Sarah Palin, who is still saying “Hey, remember me? I haven’t announced whether or not I’m going to run yet! Don’t count me out, but don’t follow me around either!”

You have to seriously question the fickleness of the GOP for continually changing their minds over who they want their “savior” to be. It seems like they have an attention span that is shorter than that of a TV executive during the Fall Season. Every horse they back seems to be “perfect”, until they do something totally unexpected… like, talk.

Michelle Bachman was “perfect” until she couldn’t tell the difference between New Hampshire and Massachusetts and was getting publicly schooled by high-schoolers. Rick Perry was Limbaugh’s “dream pick” until he started to explain his own policies and he started to get really tired during the debates. It makes you wonder what Governor Christie would say that would cause him to lose favor. Maybe sing the “Big Mac” commercial?

And, yes, getting off-track for a moment, Governor Christie’s girth is fair game! If Bill Clinton can get ragged on about literally running to McDonald’s during his run for the White House, then Chris Christie can be ragged on about his love of food. As someone who is far from skinny himself, this commentator echoes the time-honored advice of “he’s a big man, he can take a little criticism”.

But my beef here is not with Governor Christie. It is, instead, with the fickleness of the “favor” and this idea that somewhere in the political world is a “savior” just ready to make their debut and end Obama’s White House tenure; if only they can be coaxed into stepping up.

This isn’t the first time this happened. Remember Fred Thompson? The man was both a former U.S. Senator and an actor that was very much on-demand. In the 2008 campaign, the spin was that he would be “perfect” for the GOP. He was supposedly the 21^st Century’s version of Ronald Reagan. He quit his steady job with NBC in order to listen to the advice of the GOP spin doctors and run for president, only to fail miserably. I would hope that at least he got his money back from the people who sold him that bad political advice, but given the “screw-you” mentality that is politics, I seriously doubt he even got a second glance as the campaign door hit him on the way out.

Then there’s the pre-fabricated hype surrounding ex-Governor Palin. How strange that people suddenly treated her like she was the Second Coming without any reason why. At least with Obama it could be easily explained through Oprah Winfrey and big-money Internet memes. Palin’s sudden cultism, on the other hand, almost came right out of something from a “Doctor Who” episode. I half-expected there to be a room with a swirly display and a voice that tells me I’m getting very sleepy.

But while the Ministry of Truth is eager to grab and elevate the next “flavor of the moment”, there are still plenty of other candidates that are already in the running that are getting systematically ignored. Remember Gary Johnson? He’s a former governor! Same with Buddy Roemer and Jon Huntsman. Three people with solid leadership skills. How is it that these three candidates are getting systematically ignored while political spin-artists are on the hunt for the next “big thing”?

I would strongly suspect that the reason why some people are fixated on finding that “next flavor” is so they can later be recognized as some sort of king-maker. It would give them notoriety and political influence, not to mention big consulting bucks. That in and of itself is a scary concept; to build up this idea that the leadership of the United States can be chosen by an elite few that call themselves “king-makers”… especially given how this nation has for so very long despised the idea of having a king.

Let’s get brutally honest here… the GOP doesn’t need a new “flavor of the moment”. They sure as hell do not need a “savior”. They need the political equivalent of Prozac… and then they need a colonic. They need to be purged of all of their spin-doctors and “king-makers”, and then take a look at that huge stinking pile of contenders that are already out there trying to hustle for attention and campaign dollars and see what they have to offer that sets them apart from the current batch of so-called “front runners”.

The problems we are facing in this country need to be dealt with by leadership that is willing to handle them. Real leaders don’t need to be coaxed into stepping up. They certainly don’t need to be propped up as some sort of phony political “savior”, especially when the powers-that-be neither want to be saved nor do they want this nation to be saved from the misery that they helped to bring about.