Songs and Campaigns: How Politicians Never Learn to Listen

Tom Petty Tells Bachmann to Back Off "American Girl"

I like to think that this blog has documented very well the stupidity of Michele Bachmann.  But, I can't really blame her. All politicians have a stupid streak through them.  There's a quiet tragedy about how politicians never seem to actually listen to the song.

In the above link, there's an article that details Bachmann using the song "American Girl" and didn't get the permission of Tom Petty.  Below that, HuffPost lists the several examples of politicians that use songs without the artist's permission.  Even though its probably a biased list (most of the offenders are Republicans, though Obama is on the list), it seems that most frequent offender was John McCain, and specifically John McCain back in 2008.  It was like an intern just hooked up their iPod shuffle to the PA system and hit play.  Ridiculous.

Two things strike me as insanely odd in this:  First, why are there so many offenders?  I mean, surely the one mistake that would have been made would have been Ronald Reagan using "Born in the USA" and then all political campaigns after that would have hired a guy to ask all the artists whether or not they can use the songs.  You got a thousand people working for the most minor of campaigns.  All you have to do is google the record company and call them.

Bachmann Intern:  Hey, I'm So-And-So with the Michele Bachmann for President Campaign and we were wondering if we could get your permission to play "American Girl" during campaign rallies.

Tom Petty:  What?

Bachmann Intern:  Can we play "American Girl" during our campaign rallies.

Tom Petty:  Um... no.

SEE HOW EASY THAT WAS!?  It's a quiet action, your rejection isn't public and people wasting their time talking about how your campaign is ridiculous because you couldn't take the time for a five minute phone call. PS, I wish that calling Tom Petty was that easy.

Me:  So, when you were touring with Dylan in the 80's, you guys totally got high, right?

Tom Petty:  What?

Me:  You got blazed with Dylan?

Tom Petty:  Um... yeah, man, like all the time.

Me:  Awesome.

But this leads me to the other point:  Do the politicians actually listen to the songs that they are choosing to play at the rallies???  Reagan obviously never listened to "Born in the USA" before he started playing it or he would have known that the song is from the point of view of a homeless guy who was a veteran of Vietnam and was subsequently rejected from American society despite his service.  Charlie Crist played "Road to Nowhere", which is a terrible, terrible, terrible idea for a campaign song and Crist deserved to lose just based off of that.  Why not play "And She Was"?  The girl in the video was floating for Crist's sake (sorry for the pun, couldn't help myself), which suggests that we're going some where with Crist!

Then you have Bob Dole changing the lyrics from "I'm a Soul Man" to "I'm a Dole Man", which is like saying "Yeah, I'm fucking cool!" to "I work for a banana company and I'm here to see that all your banana needs are being met..."

And then we come back to Bachmann's use of "American Girl".  It's clearly a song about a girl that jumps off the balcony after losing something (or someone) that completed her.  I'll grant its appropriate in the sense that what made her American was the fact that she was going to try and die trying, if that's what it meant.  But maybe you shouldn't share with your followers that you don't have a problem with them imaging you jumping off the balcony.  Think about that.  But I suppose, if you did, you wouldn't be Michele Bachmann.

The Problem With Bachmann and the Modern Media

Michele Bachmann Doesn't Know How to Answer a Fucking Question

The question is simple and the answer is transparent.  Bachmann is asked very plainly, "Why did you say that Obama only issued one oil drilling permit when he released over 250?".

The response:  Obama hasn't released enough.

(All the articles that I have here go over to the Politifact website, my favorite news site on the web.  I like it because it's fair, even-minded and has a long, long memory.)

No where in the Bachmann lexicon is she capable of admitting that she was wrong.  Go ahead, try to find a statement that Bachmann's made that she's come back and said that she was wrong on.  Its not like she said "My favorite color is blue..." when all the Bachmann insiders have said that it's red.  I'm talking about the Treasury Secretary wants us to have a One World currency, or (my favorite) that Swine Flu can be attributed to Democrats being president, when it happened under a Republican.  Not just wrong, but insanely wrong, wrong that could only have been achieved by knowing what the correct answer was and then drawing the lines to the complete opposite facts.

I should point out that no congressman (or woman) has ever gone directly (which is the key word) from the House to the White House (though there are plenty who have tried.)  I think that Bachmann has about the same chance that Pat Robertson did back in '88.  The Evangelicals will be mobilized for a little bit but other elements of the party are going to resist the portion that insists upon the Christian religion (please see Hucakbee campaign) and want to focus on other aspects of the platform.

But in the meantime, this exchange makes two things quite clear:

FIRST:  If Michele Bachmann is incapable of saying something to the effect of "You know what, I was way off on the numbers, HOWEVER, the point about the Obama Administration's hostility towards off-shore drilling shows BLAH BLAH BLAH!", then what does this mean for her presidency?  I mean, if the US makes a mistake on the international stage (a novel concept, I know), is she going to redact it?  Is she going to acknowledge that we're flesh and blood humans capable of making a mistake?

And it's not a question of opinion that the last Swine Flu outbreak was during a Democrat.  It's an objective fact that it happened during the Ford Administration (one of the forgotten worst presidencies because Carter was so much worse ::eye roll::) Did she apologize and say "You know, what I was just trying to be snide."

I know that it's not politically-wise to apologize for cocking up and moving on, but you'll always gain the respect of the people whenever you admit that you were wrong.

Instead, all she could say was that Obama was messing something up about offshore drilling, like he was supposed to put the drill literally on his shoulder and swim to the bottom of the Gulf and get the oil up through a crazy straw... I assume Bachmann has a lot of crazy straws...  But this leads me to the second problem:

SECOND:  When she was obviously dodging the question, when she wouldn't apologize, when she wouldn't even admit that she had on several occasions said something that was not only wrong, but misleading (which is what makes it Pants on Fire), what did Schieffer do?  He said "I don't believe that you answered the question...", and then ended the segment.

There has to be a responsibility that the media has towards those that are LYING.  He wasn't even trying to pin her down in the report that she had been caught lying and just let it roll on by.  "Hope to see you down the trail."?  I'm not accusing Schieffer of favoritism with Bachmann or the GOP, but I am accusing him of laziness.  When you repeat a question, and they are giving you the same answer, ask "Why are dodging the question?" or "Why won't you answer the question directly?" or "Did you know that a decapitated monkey with Clinton bumper stickers stapled to its body has a better chance of becoming president than you?"

The unfortunate thing is that there's no recourse, there's no real chance to take a step back and to have an honest conversation about how we can't have an honest conversation.

Herman Cain Doesn't Know What Racism Is

Hermain Cain: Jon Stewart Attacked Me "Because I'm Black"

First off the bat, no, he didn't.  Stewart attacked Cain because Cain said that he wasn't going to read a bill more than three pages.  Let's remember Obama's the first president since Clinton to actually show some intellectual curiosity and a respect that issues have nuances, like health care reform and wars and whatnot. While he did come back and say that he was exaggerating, he didn't really fucking seem like it at the time.

Conservatives often get pegged as being a pack of racists and I think that some liberals throw the term too loosely around.  For everyone's edification, this is the definition of racism.

Talking in a voice doesn't do that.  There's a fine line, sure.  If Stewart had said "Mammy done tol' me to never do no readin' or nuttin!", that would have been racist because it perpetuates stereotypes and in the context of Cain, it would have been clear that the slight would have been against blacks.  However, speaking with a little scratchiness in the voice doesn't mean that you're trying to invoke imagery of blacks.

Now, the previous point is moot.  On Stewart's appearance on Fox News, he doesn't address this issue.  He cites the fact that he's an equal opportunity offender and leaves it at that.

But if Herman Cain thinks that this is racist, he's got a lot waiting for him.  Remember that the Republican Party in Southern California sent around an email in 2008 saying that if Barack Obama was elected, the White House would look like this:

Now, this is racist.

...

One last thing:  I find it incredulous that Herman Cain only heard about it when he was talking to Sean Hannity.  He said he was campaigning, but c'mon.  Really?  You were too busy to know that Stewart made a joke about you?  Hell, man, you're not running for president if the Daily Show hasn't made a joke about you?

I used to listen to Cain's talk radio program.  I've heard him give speeches and I've heard him talking to others.  The man is vain, arrogant and is in so much love with himself, he cuddles with himself after he jerks off.  The only reason why he's responded to Stewart/Daily Show is because it's free air time to him.  Granted, I'm doing him a favor by talking about him on this blog, but that's going to end now.

Converting Across the Aisle

One of my favorite thinkers of our day is Christopher Hitchens.  Most of the time, he's very well-reasoned in his arguments and, even when he's off the mark, he's tight, biting and smarter than a god-damn whip.

Recently, he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and has slowed his output as of late.  I usually watch him for his religious debates (brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!) and for his commentary on politics foreign and domestic.  I don't always agree with him, but I respect the hell out of him.

I always forget he reviews books and, this past weekend, reviewed the book from playwright/author David Mamet.  "The Secret Knowledge" is a book that discusses Mamet's "conversion" from liberal to conservative... 

And Hitchens drops an elbow from the sky! And Mamet is down...

I highly recommend the article because it shows how adroit Hitchens is with the written word and that it's not necessarily a problem of what the argument is but it is a problem as to how a problem is presented.  And the argument present within the book is clunky and full of errors.

In the effort of full disclosure, there may have a been a mix up regarding conservative thinkers: American Thinker: Mixing up Hitchens, Mamet and Hayek?

In response to that article, I have to admit that for all the points that Hitchens makes, this is merely an oversight for the overall argument.  I agree that sources need to be cited properly, but really?  You're point is that it wasn't Fredrich Hayek, it was Thomas Sowell?  What about, oh, I don't know, everything else that was mentioned?


I used to think of myself as conservative, especially when I first got into politics.  I think my change to liberalism began in relation to three events, all of which occurred in or around 2006:

1- Hurricane Katrina.  Whether the government should have been responsible is something else entirely.  However, since there was supposed to be a response and it was slow, it seemed like the answer wasn't to limit government but to try and make it better in its current manifestation.

2- The Iraq War.  I supported the invasion and subsequent "occupation" (there's really not another word for it) and for three years, I defended it and argued for it.  Then, the death toll reached 2,000 American soldiers.  And I thought to myself "That's it.  That's the number".  In Blowin' In The Wind, Bob Dylan asks "And how many deaths will it take 'till he knows that too many people have died?"  And it haunts me, still to this day that I have a number.  2,000.  Not 1,999 or one, but 2,000.

3-  (Not so proud of this one) I started dating a staunch liberal... hey, liberal or conservative, we all want to get laid.

Now, these events happened slowly, over the course of a few years.  When I got to "the other side", I looked back on the company that I kept and the thoughts I had and the views that I espoused, and I thought to myself about how ardent I was in believing these things.

But, I thought to myself, I didn't think of myself as wrong, any more than I consider myself to be wrong now.  At this point, I fully comprehended what it was to have a point of view and the difference between the subjective and the objective.  One can have an opinion and I can have an opinion, but we should all share facts.  I'm 26 years old.  I've realized this.

Mamet hasn't.  And that's the problem with conversions in general, be it political or religious.  The new and faithful are more adamant about the belief than those raised in the proposition.  (Don't believe me?  Ask Cat Stevens)  And if you think that Mamet has got it together, thats fine... but he admires Sarah Palin for being "a Worker".

What work has she done?  I can only really venture to say that she's an excellent self-promoter, but as a mother?  Failed.  As a politician?  Failed.  As a leader?  I don't think that she's even begun to learn how to do that.

Meghan McCain Is Completely Reasonable (Countdown to her being kicked out of GOP begins NOW!)

Meghan McCain's Advice to the GOP Hopefuls

Two of the things that I've always told myself if I ever started a political blog would be first, that my arguments would be weak and in an echo chamber AND, most importantly, about once a week I would talk about how I have a crush on Meghan McCain.

But whats secretly most appealing about her is that she's someone who is not just extremely beautiful but also very reasonable.  She's like the version of her father that got me interested in politics (a lifetime ago in 2000).  She's like a date-able, blonde George Will.  Don't get me wrong, George Will seems like a nice kind of guy, the kind that would insist on paying the bill and would end the first date with a hug after holding your hand on the walk.  He's classy, in a Gilded-Age "You're not a flapper are you" kind of way.

What was I talking about?  Oh, yeah, Meghan McCain.

I've already included the link where McCain the Younger lists the different things that the GOP Hopefuls will have to do in order to get the nomination.  I don't disagree with her by and large.  There are a couple of little things though:


"What the Republican Party needs is a candidate unafraid to put the president up against the wall and call him out on all the damage his administration has done, especially to the economy, in the last three years. "


And all that damage would include what?  De-regulation of banks?  Turning a blind eye and encouraging the regulators to turn the other way or even get in bed with the people who brought us into the financial mess in the first place?  It's phrasing like this that makes one think that the federal government is the reason why we're in the economic straits that we're in, when we all know that this is not the case.  Would Ms. McCain also be willing to blame the previous president for signing the $700 billion bailout or continue to ignore it and pretend that there was just $787 billion bailout by the current president?

However, McCain makes an open acknowledgement that not many in the GOP are willing to make right now.    The fact of the matter is that Obama is going to be extremely difficult to hit and bring down in 2012.  The sooner that R's begin to admit that, the closer to winning they'll get.

The best bit of advice was to "outlast Palin fever".  McCain manages to be diplomatic about Palin, but also, in a sense, derides the actual tenacity of the campaign.  The one comment of "... at some point she is going to have to do something other than come up with clever soundbites." seems to be a little off.  I remember that was a major critique of Clinton was all he came up with were soundbites and you know what that got him?  Two terms.

One last bit:  the "forget about Iowa" part.  In the section, she talks about how its less important than people might portray it to be and that the real gamble and the real stakes are established in New Hampshire.  She's not entirely correct.  Obama made his first strong showing in Iowa back in 2008, to the surprise (even shock) to many.  Granted, Hilary Clinton came back in the NH primary, but Iowa was supposed to be a cake walk for her and, instead, it marked the beginning of the end (or the seemingly endless Bataan death march to the Democratic nomination.)

Also would be fair to point out that in 2000, John McCain didn't get the nod in IA, he got it in NH and then proceeded to get the shit beat out of him by Bush II all over the rest of the USA.  I say this not with malice towards John McCain; after all, I was supporting him and wishing that the rest of the country would see reason and vote McCain in 2000.  But Iowa did figure into the overall political strategy and, the candidates can't completely ignore IA.  Why?

Well, assume that a plausible candidate like Romney, Johnson or Huntsman pull out of IA and then put everything down in NH?  Now imagine if Herman Cain or (worse?) Michelle Bachmann getting the nod in IA.  They went from being ridiculous and inane to being "legitimate" and "plausible".

I mean, generally speaking, the entire primary/caucus/nomination process (on both sides, but especially the GOP) has to be reformed.  The arbitrariness of random states holding a good deal of political sway in the process isn't good politics and it's detrimental to the entirety of the campaign.  I can go on and on about it (and probably will in a later post).  But, the way that everything is set up currently, the road has to go through IA.  A long, desolate, pointless road, but a road nonetheless.

Jon Stewart Pisses on the Rug in Fox's House and Doesn't Blink

http://youtu.be/RwyUdBp-cck

I don't genuinely believe that Chris Wallace is a bad person.  Nor do I believe that Chris Wallace is a blind fool. But it seemed like Wallace was more than willing to do the same old tactics when it came to trying to wrangle Stewart into the little logical fallacies that are presented as true arguments.

"Well, Diana Sawyer said one time that the cops would be able to arrest you in Arizona just because you look Mexican and THAT'S NOT TRUE!"

"Well, you're right, that's not true."

"Well, then the mainstream media has an intense liberal bias and we're looking to balance that out."

I've never liked the phrase "mainstream media", even when I watched Fox News on a regular basis, even when I was voting Republican.  Fox News consistently ranks first in the ratings and yet calls CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS and MSNBC and they brag, brag, brag about it.

But Stewart is in rare form in the video.  He's at once gracious AND he's sharp, biting and unforgiving.  He's a man of principles, probably because he takes criticisms of himself more seriously than most in the media do.

One last thing that I'll make mention of:  Wallace says "Let's talk about your network".  Then, he plays a clip from the Roast of Pamela Anderson and then has this "AH HA!" look on his face, like he just won the argument.  The point that no other network seems to get is that The Daily Show is a show that is comedy first and commentary second.  Also, if you're going to run a news network, get criticized by The Daily Show and then go "Well, your network tells dick and fart jokes!", you have automatically lost the argument.  The fact of the matter is that The Daily Show isn't news, it's satire, and if you're too blind or dumb to see the difference, you're in bigger trouble than Stewart making a joke about you.

Kudos to Stewart and as long as Jon and the Daily Show don't take themselves that seriously, we just might be alright

The Single Issue Voter and the Thrill Is Gone

I'm pretty liberal.  At least, that's what I consider myself to be and have considered myself to be that way for a while.  But, more so, I consider myself practical.  That's why when I started reading this article: Progressives Break Up With Obama, I was pretty frustrated.

Reason being is this:  the problem that many have with conservatives and the GOP is that they are narrow-minded or corridor thinkers.  They focus on one thing and they run with that.  I'm not talking about something general, like the economy or any of the wars that we are engaged in at present but, bar none, the most important thing that we get done is marriage equality!  And immigration reform!  But NOOOOOOOOO, he hasn't paid MEEEEE enough attention, so I'm going to create a fissure in the party and the movement until I GET WHAT I WANT and I don't care if a Rep gets elected in the process.

To these "progressives", I refer to the following website: http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com/

In there, you will find that the prez has done quite a bit and a lot of his political capital was spent on health care reform, which goes to help ALL groups and minorities in the country, not just legislation to focus on specific groups of people.

I remember in 2008 (a lifetime ago) when there was talk about why people were supporting the Obama campaign.  And I remember reading a round-table discussion wherein several people were talking about why they were there.  And a young, single mother was talking about how tough things had been for her as late.  And then it got over to an older guy who was asked why he was there and he thought for a moment and responded:  I'm here to help people like the mother over there.

Don't get me wrong.  While I support Obama and I hope that he gets re-elected, I'm not in the disillusioned world that everything is perfectly fine, that he's not without flaws.  But at the same time, I think that he's a stronger candidate than the GOP has to offer at present.  And please not, its that I think he's a strong choice, not because I think he's the lesser of two evils or something like that.  A vote for Obama shouldn't be a vote against the GOP, it should be an affirmation for the Obama.

So, when people come out and they say that they begrudgingly support Obama but he hasn't done everything that every liberal/progressive wants him to do.

Sorry, guys, I guess we'll have to wait until next term to get our gay caliphate up and running...