Postman makes humorous observation:
“There’s no certainty in this mortal coil.” State GOP Chairman Luke Esser talking about his count of Republican caucus votes.
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
Hamlet, Act III, scene I
The title of Postman’s blog entry is “The Republican book club,” which made me think of a few jokes, one of which included a certain Bush fave. But I’ll pose a question:
What books do you think they read in Republican book clubs?
Leave your answers in the comments.
(PS: What happens if, say, John McCain writes a book about his years in the US Senate and titles it “My Struggle”? Does the German publisher have to change the name, or do they just purposely translate it wrong to avoid certain, um, issues?)
“A Finger in the Eye is Worth Two For Herr Bush, or How I Scared The Electorate Straight to Bush With the Specter of Gay Marriage”
by Karl “Goopers always trash their gay fathers, don’t they?” Rove
“Raising Perfect Children: Republican Lesbian Daughters who Stab Themselves in the Back for Daddy”
by Dick Cheney
Hmmm ….
I can imagine thys himagineere. Let me offer a fun alternative:
What do you suppose the tiles will be of the campaign 08 memoirs?
Obama: Great Expectations
Clinton: Little women
Giuliani9: Snow birds
McCain: Experiences in the conservative harem
Romney How to succeed in business
George Allen That and Why it Happened
Huckabee Tails of the Mississippi
Paul Call to glory
Republican book clubs “hot titles”:
Anything by Ann Coulter
Anything that blames liberals
Anything that blames Clinton
Anything that purports to show the war in Iraq is working
Anything that blames anyone else but refuses to take responsibilty for problems
specific (made-up) titles:
“How I found WMD’s in Iraq” by Condaleeza Rice
“Energy policy in a nutshell” by Dick Cheney and Ken Lay
“Executive salaries: Why they are never enough”
“Preemptive foreign policy: How to invade countries that are no threat” by George W. Bush
“How Reagan showed that deficits are good for the economy”
Here is another story on how the great republican surge is working in Iraq:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....90_pf.html
Republican songs:
“there’s no dictator like our dictator…”
“I only torture because I love you”
“We do get fooled again” The (Iran) Who
“money, money, money…..”
“your no good….”
Remembrances of Things Past by Marcel Proust.
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
1984 by George Orwell.
And that point about “My Struggle” is interesting, especially in relation to the Air Force’s new slogan “Above All”…
Wee….
http://www.usatoday.com/printe.....om.art.htm
Telecom lobbyists tied to McCain
No favors for special interests, campaign says
By Matt Kelley
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Republican presidential candidate John McCain has condemned the influence of “special interest lobbyists,” yet dozens of lobbyists have political and financial ties to his presidential campaign — particularly from telecommunications companies, an industry he helps oversee in the Senate.
Of the 66 current or former lobbyists working for the Arizona senator or raising money for his presidential campaign, 23 have lobbied for telecommunications companies in the past decade, Senate lobbying disclosures show
What happens if, say, John McCain writes a book about his years in the US Senate and titles it “My Struggle”? Does the German publisher have to change the name, or do they just purposely translate it wrong to avoid certain, um, issues?
Better yet is the Arabic translation, “Jihadiya” (My Jihad).
(PS: What happens if, say, John McCain writes a book about his years in the US Senate and titles it “My Struggle”? Does the German publisher have to change the name, or do they just purposely translate it wrong to avoid certain, um, issues?)
They could call it “My Jihad”
Damn you, Tlazolteotl! GET. OUT. OF. MY. HEAD! :)
The Audacity of Hope by Mr. Obama. They wonder how anyone could possibly have any. At all. Ever.
That staple of the Republican Book Clubs:
“My Pet Goat”
Of COURSE!
“I’ve been Ayn Randed, and nearly labeled a communist ’cause I’m left-handed”
“What books do you think they read in Republican book clubs?”
That’s easy — “Republican Dianetics.” The GOP is a cult whose adherents are brainwashed and drink poisoned Kool-Aid. A Republican, by definition, is impervious to facts or reason and incapable of making the connection between his idiotic fantasy-based beliefs and real-world consequences. You can’t reason with Republicans any more than with members of any cult who have given over their brain functions to the thought control of their Master.
Well, it didn’t take long for veiled references to “Mein Kampf” to surface, did it? That one naturally comes to mind when you talk about Republican reading preferences.
Of course, these veiled references are completely lost on our xenophobic friends, who consider it unpatriotic to learn any language other than Redneck English, and therefore have no fucking idea of what the German rendition of “My Struggle” is.
Ok, some real books that might be on the list:
How to Steal an Election – David W. Moore
Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War – Michael Isikoff
Steal This Vote: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America – Andrew Gumbel
Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?: Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count – Steve Freeman and Joel Bleifuss
and, of course:
Beginning Programming For Dummies – Wallace Wang
Conservatives generally do not read books. They read pamphlets and articles about books and specific authors.
Since said articles and pamphlets are written by what the Republican considers an authoritative source, there is no need to read the author. The ‘less gifted’ Republican simply listens to talk radio to get his ten minute hate. Republican womwn are told what to think by their husbands — just like God intended.
If you want to have some fun, give a Republican some chapters from “Das Kapital”. Tell him it’s about the virtues of capitalism, and don’t tell him who the author is. Then watch their brain go through a muscle-spasm as they try to (a) read and understand the text, and (b) figure out how to use it to their advantage. You get extra points if they then post quotes online as authority to support Bush’s economic programs. Deduct points if the prank actually results in permanant brain injury – after all, we don’t really want anybody to get hurt.
The U. N.’s “Universal Declaration for Human Rights”
Just joking!
Vote John McCain
Republican Top 20 reading list:
1. Republican Dianetics
2. Mein Kampf
3. Noble Lies and Perpetual War
4. It’s All About the Oil Baby
5. Immaculate Deception:The Bush Crime Family
6. The Dirty Truth: The Oil and Chemical Dependency of George W. Bush
7. Republican Injustice for all Democratic Leaders
8. How to buy the Press by Rupert Murdoch
9. The George W. Bush Coloring Book
10. State of Denial
11. The War on Truth
12. Friends In High Places: The Bechtel Story
13. How Much are you Making on the War Daddy?
14. The Halliburton Agenda
15. My Pet Goat
16. 1984
17. Blameless and Godless
18. How to Avoid the Draft by Armchair Warmonger
19. Lying to the American Public by Smirky A Chimp
20. How to Destroy the Constitution by Signing Statements
21. “So?” by Dick Cheney
George: McCain is too old and senile to be president.
@ 17
In the summer of 1982, back when I was still planning on going to law school, I was an intern at the Washington Center for Learning Alternatives (I worked in the DC Corporation Council’s law office). My roommate, also an Econ student, and I attended a party populated by a number of College Republicans.
When the conversation turned to Economics, my roommate and I decided to have a bit of fun. He was asking them about workers and fumbling it a bit when I said, “Yeah. What about the expropriation of the surplus value of the proletariat?”
The reaction was instant silence throughout the room. Ice cubes stopped falling in mid-air. Finally, one young woman said, with great indigence, “Well! You’ve probably read the Communist Manifesto!”
We beat a hasty retreat. There’s no reasonable way to have a conversation with that kind of mind-set.
4000 American dead in Iraq.
McCain calls for “a greater military commitment” and says “more troops are necessary.”
http://johnmccain.com/Informin.....3f11d8.htm
I was invited once (quite a few years ago) to a “Young Republicans” meeting at the College Club, downtown. There were about ten of us at the luncheon. I was about thirty at the time, and by far the youngest one in the room. Everyone else was at least fifty.
I remember thinking to myself: “If these are the YOUNG Republicans, how old are the OLD Republicans”?
Now that McCain is the presumptive Republican nominee, I now have the answer to that question.
Erratum: “indigence” should be “indignance” (bloody spell-checkers).
Actually, if you think about it, the Republicans have really suffered from an “age gap”. Of the Baby Boomers who came of age during the 1960’s & early 1970’s, who wanted to be a Republican???? Most I knew didn’t want to be associated with Nixon, even before Watergate, and especially not afterwards. That left only some real social rejects, people who couldn’t make it in high school or college without falling into the clutches of the Republican cult, which accepted them with all their faults. You know, people like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. They were rewarded with unexplainable draft deferments and party positions, to be followed by government appointments. Or you have the children of priviledge, like Bush II.
So the story of the 1990’s through 2010 may be one of the “generation gap” – the absence of large numbers of really qualified Republicans who came of age post WWII.
Think about it – the Republican candidates for President before 2000 were all WWII era veterans – Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I, Dole. After 2000 all they could come up with among the “Baby Boomers” was McCain and Bush II. This sets up the current 2008 election possibly between Obama (a 46 year old?) and McCain, in his 70’s.
Sure, there may be some Republicans who came of age in the heydays of the Reagan years, which would put them somewhere in their 40’s now. But while we see them in local politics, we don’t see them so much on the national scene. Do you have to be 60 before you are considered a graduate from the “Young Republican” ranks?
Of course, the Bush II adminstration has killed off the otherwise promising careers of lots of Republican hopefulls, some of them younger than others. Rice & Gonzales were bout touted for high government office after the Bush administration, but now their future political careers may well be over.
I don’t know were Gonazels will wind up, his “credibility gap” is rather large, and he probably will end up working for law firms as a “rainmaker”, purporting to use his “government contacts” among Republican lawmakers to his client’s advantage – for whatever that’s worth.
Rice is a bit sadder story, in that she hasn’t been tarred with any personal scandal as a result of the Bush administration. But her steadfast loyalty to Bush, especially in continuing to exhort his policies to the world, have left their mark on her. I suspect she will leave the Bush administration to some high-level executive position in some private company.
18. How to Avoid the Draft by Armchair Warmonger
Foreword by Rush Limbaugh: How aggresive anal intercourse caused my anal fissures so I didn’t have to serve.
Special bonus by Dick Cheney: How I got 5 draft deferments because “I had other priorities other than military service.” But today, 4,000 Americans lost their lives for his lies and he says on TV: “So.”
@19 Why?
“Home Abortions” by Cousin Jedidiah Billy Bob
@28
Her pathetic performance before the 9/11 (non)investigative committee was enough for any person of integrity to tar her with personal scandal. Remember her stuttering, blathering attempt to describe the Presidential daily breifing (the one stating that Bin Ladin determined to strike tall buildings with airliners) as an “historic” document? She was awarded the position of Secretary of State for her hoop-jumping antics.