Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush & the Politics of Exhaustion

Reblogged from The Daily Beast, by Nick Gillespie:

Hillbillery and Jebro

For partisan and media elites, ‘the past is never dead. It’s not even past,’ which means with these two candidates likely to lead the race in 2016, the future doesn’t look so different.

 

As if we need it, here’s extra proof that contemporary politics is more thoroughly exhausted than adult actress Lisa Sparkxxx must have been at the end of her record-setting roll in the hay at the 2004 “Eroticon” in Warsaw, Poland.

The Washington Post reports, “Many of the Republican Party’s most powerful insiders and financiers have begun a behind-the-scenes campaign to draft former Florida governor Jeb Bush into the 2016 presidential race, courting him and his intimates and starting talks on fundraising strategy.” For once, I found myself agreeing with Jesse Jackson. Can’t we just “stay out the Bushes” this one time at least?

On the other side of the aisle, it’s a given that Hillary Clinton is not only the presumptive Democratic nominee, but the only possible Democratic nominee anyone can name with a straight face (sorry, Joe Biden, but this just ain’t your century any more than the 20th was). “There was a Bush or a Clinton in the White House and cabinet for 32 years straight,” notes Maureen Dowd at The New York Times, whose headline writer adds, “Brace Yourself for Hillary and Jeb.”

As it was, it shall always be. About the only cause for optimism is that there’s no Kennedy in the mix.

At least Lisa Sparkxxx participated voluntarily in her own screwing. For the large and growing plurality of Americans who identify as independent, there’s seemingly no way to opt out of the compulsive-repetitive disorder among legacy media types and partisan string-pullers. What is it that Faulkner said in Requiem for a Nun (1950)? “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Who knew that he was talking about politics in the goddamned 21st century, not Yoknapatawpha County after the Civil War?

It’s not a mystery why elites would totally dig a retro contest between two of the nation’s least-appealing families. It would mean that zombified pundits such as David Gergen, whose lack of cogency is directly proportional to the number of administrations in which he served, could push off retirement a few more years and writers such as Dowd, who peaked in terms of what passes for wit and originality during the Clinton era, could recycle old columns as unashamedly as Cate Blanchet recycles plastic bags at the local Safeway. GOP and Democratic apparatchiks and their big-money enablers wouldn’t have to struggle with the grim and unavoidable fact that fewer and fewer of us are willing to identify with either party – even to strangers on the phone.

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Edward Snowden’s Future

Another sobering and thought-provoking article from our friends at Laissez Faire Today.

Can Snowden Occupy a Vacant Cabin in a Snowstorm?

When it comes to the NSA leaks and Edward Snowden, government has circled the wagons. Whether Democrat or Republican, the folks doing the people’s business have one view and the people see it differently. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was booed and interrupted by liberal attendees at the Netroots Nation conference on Saturday.

Netroots Nation is a convention for progressive political leaders. Pelosi, a darling of those on the left, was the keynote speaker at the event. But her pro-surveillance, anti-Snowden remarks incited the crowd.  “We’re listening to our progressive leaders who are supposed to be on our side of the team saying it’s OK for us to get targeted” for online surveillance, said Jana Thrift of Eugene, Ore. “It’s crazy. I don’t know who Nancy Pelosi really is.”

We know who Nancy Pelosi is. She’s an authoritarian. She isn’t for freedom, or the people, she represents authority. She’s all for the government spying on us and taking lots of our money to do so. Like most in Washington she believes she knows what’s best for us. Americans should be on a “need to know” basis to keep us safe in Pelosi’s world.

Those on the right are just as bad.

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