Send In The Clowns

I told you from the beginning that this cycle’s selection of Republican candidates is an absolute clown show, to put it kindly.

I also asked two main questions. The first one was “Where are the broke (poor) Republicans?”. The second was “How come none of the better Republicans (Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, etc) want to run, if they think it’s going to be so easy to defeat President Obama in 2012?”.

I was previously done talking about this tomfoolery, but the last few days, the pundits have been talking about something they hadn’t mentioned this entire time…

Beat The Clock

When the Republicans were crying for Chris Christie to run, ALLLLL the pundits were saying that he only had until X date, because after that, he couldn’t register for the first primary, etc.

When that date passed, the pundits INSISTED that this keystone-cops’esque group of candidates were the only ones that could POSSIBLY be nominated.

This remained in effect for a couple of months, I suppose. Meanwhile, it had become clear to me that the only Republican candidate that stood a chance of defeating Obama in 2012 was Romney. This was because Huntsman, who I think is a way better candidate, has been polling at less than 5% this entire time (being generous.. I’m actually not sure he was ever above 3%), and other than him, all the other candidates have offended just about everyone in the country, pandering to “The Right”, and they wouldn’t possibly get any votes from independents that would put them anywhere near to a victory in the general election.

For instance.. Michele Bachmann has been running around saying she wants to deport 12 million illegal aliens. This is because nobody had asked her what Bill O’Reilly finally asked her to her face, which was “How do you plan to do that? o_O”. Her answer was “Enforce the laws that aren’t currently being enforced”.

Obviously, that doesn’t make ANY SENSE, because you can only enforce laws against people who BREAK. THE. LAW., so O’Reilly asked her if she understood how costly it was going to be to go door-to-door, finding the 12 million aliens, arresting them, processing them, and flying them out of the country. Of course, she had no reply for that, because her plan was stupid to begin with. It’s just NONSENSE she was talking in order to try to be nominated, just like waving a magic wand and creating $2 gasoline in a free market economy (about which she has ALSO not offered a viable plan).

Then, you have Santorum saying something ridiculous every week. He’ll be off the stage soon. I predict he’ll have enough after the first round of voting, which is coming up in 3-4 weeks. SEEYA! >:D

Then, there was Cain, talking about electrified fences and drones to keep Mexicans in Mexico. Haven’t heard jack-**** from him in a full week, ever since he “suspended” his campaign. SEEYA! >:D

Then, you have Ron Paul, who has really, really good ideas, assuming you live in the gold-rush era of the United States Wild West. :) Basically, his idea for life is “Every man for himself”. Get rid of federal this and that, and if your house floats down the river, it sucks to be you. He won’t be nominated, and he MOST CERTAINLY will never be elected President.

Then, you have Perry, who was at the top of the statistics until the first time he opened his mouth… From then on, it’s been one glaring embarrassment after another, and even before all of his gaffes, President Obama was being kind to him… I should say, before AMERICA heard all of Perry’s blunders. I’m sure there’s an entire file full of them that Obama was already aware of by the time he made this statement:

YouTube Link => youtu.be/PYzmzzA9dTY

President Obama: “You know.. Mr. Perry just got in the Presidental race, and I think that everybody who runs for President, it probably takes them a little bit of time before they start realizing that this isn’t like running for Governor or running for Senator or running for Congress, and you’ve gotta be a little more careful about what you say.. But I’ll cut him some slack, he’s only been at it for a few days now”

And then it was just downhill, downhill, downhill, downhill…

So the only person left that hasn’t completely, utterly, absolutely disqualified himself from the race is Gingrich. He’s currently receiving all the Not-Romney or Anti-Romney or Anybody-But-Romney poll votes.

So, it would seem that since Romney can’t get past 25% EVAR in the polls, that now that Gingrich is pulling higher numbers, Republicans would be talking Gingrich, Gingrich, Gingrich now, right?…

WRONG! :D

What?… Who?

The last few days, I’ve been hearing about JEB BUSH, who was never a part of this process AT ALL, from the giddyap!

Of course, I wondered if maybe someone made a mistake, but a different pundit mentioned his name, and a different pundit on a different station, and I was like WTF is going on here? o_O

ALL OF A SUDDEN, what they’re talking about is a “Brokered Convention”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brokered_convention

A brokered convention is a situation in United States politics in which there are not enough delegates ‘won’ during the presidential primary and caucus elections for a single candidate to have a pre-existing majority, during the first official vote for a political party’s presidential-candidate at its nominating convention.

Once the first ballot, or vote, has occurred, and no candidate has a majority of the delegates’ votes, the convention is then considered brokered; thereafter, the nomination is decided through a process of alternating political horse-trading, and additional re-votes.[1][2][3][4] In this circumstance, all regular delegates (who, previously, were pledged to the candidate who had won their respective state’s primary or caucus election) are “released,” and are able to switch their allegiance to a different candidate before the next round of balloting. It is hoped that this ‘freedom’ will result in a re-vote resulting in a clear majority of delegates for one candidate.

Do you think the pundits might have mentioned this MONTHS AGO? :D ******* IDIOTS! :D

Start From Scratch

If this circus act becomes a Brokered Convention, the Republicans can turn around and nominate anybody they want, so they can easily replace one of these clowns with a viable Republican candidate.

How might this happen?

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/23/the_gop_needs_a_brokered_convention/singleton/” rel=”nofollow”>www.salon.com/2011/11/23/the_gop_needs_a_brokered_convention/singleton/

Less noticed, but no less important, is the new GOP voting system, which is set up for early primary and caucus states to vote first, followed by all other proportionally allocated delegate states next. From April 1 on, the winner-take-all primary and caucus states will vote. That means a weak front-runner can earn victories in early states without taking a commanding share of that state’s delegates, while several challengers can lose, but still rack up a decent delegate total.

Ron Paul, for instance, is often overlooked by the media as a factor because his ceiling of support in the polls appears to be between 10 and 15 percent. But since his floor of support isn’t far below that, he will be able to pick up a chunk of delegates who won’t be available to Romney. The same will be true for Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry if they stay in the race — and the latter has plenty of cash still on hand.

But Not Mitt Romney won’t be on the ballot, right? Well, yes and no. Several candidates who aren’t Mitt Romney are likely to be on the ballot in all 50 states. If a majority of the party agrees on nothing more than Not Mitt Romney, the real Mitt Romey cannot enter April with a majority of delegates. If Romney is able to climb to even 30 percent nationally in the pre-April states — something he hasn’t done in a single national poll — and wins a corresponding percentage of the vote, he would still have only 349 delegates. That means he would need to capture 868 of the 1,217 winner-take-all delegates to capture the nomination through the primary process. His only hope is that the other candidates have dropped out.

And, if they do, why exactly would the party leaders step in to save Romney’s nomination? Rather than settle for a nominee incapable of generating enthusiasm, they could use the convention to find a candidate more in tune with the Republican voters.

BOOYAH!!! :D HAHAHA Enter Jeb Bush!!! >:D

So the final joke might be on everybody watching these shenanigans.

If Romney splits all the delegates before April with Gingrich, Paul & Perry (Bachmann & Santorum will be out of the race looooong before then) and then loses pathetically in the South, because they don’t feel like voting for a Mormon, all this may have been for nothing, as the Republicans nominate whomever they like for the general election, including Chris Christie, Paul Ryan or anybody else that formerly claimed they weren’t going to run.

Thinkin’ Of A Master Plan

Unfortunately for the Republicans, by the time that happens, their obstructionist tactics and blatant disregard for the poor will have fully backfired on them and it won’t matter who they send to lose to Obama.

If this workers’ tax cut and extended unemployment benefits plan isn’t passed, the blame will be placed on Republicans, every single day, from now until election day.

If nobody gets a job, it will be blamed on the Republicans, every day.

If the troops that just returned home can’t find work, it will be blamed on the Republicans, every day.

Oh.. I forgot Gingrich.. I fully expect him to self-destruct before he gains enough delegates to be nominated. He SHOULD, however, be able to block Romney enough to catalyze the Brokered Convention.

I’d like to believe that this is the actual Republican master plan.. That they have some super-nominee waiting in the wings, practicing INTELLIGENT answers about foreign policy, prepping debate skills, and practicing speeches.

Having seen them send Palin last cycle, I think that concept is highly unlikely, and I continue to be amazed and amused that the Republicans REFUSE to send their best & brightest to challenge Barack Obama for the Presidency of the United States of America.
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Continued from Communication [Part 1]

So now we get to the point where people have this expectation of entitlement to intrusion. This is one of the reasons why I wrote “Digital Internet Snobbery”. I was getting flak from someone because I am not available by text. This was after I SPECIFICALLY TOLD HER how she could get in touch with me, which was via email… which she can do from her phone if she can text from her phone, so I didn’t see what the problem was. Unfortunately, she had been hoping I was going to live into someone else’s style, and it ain’t that type o’ party. :D

I missed the text revolution because I went directly to AIM. The reason I haven’t updated my ancient phone up until now is that I’m available via lots of services which are more efficient for my style of interaction. As a matter of fact, my contact information’s listed in the sidebar to this very post. If you can’t figure out from there how to contact me, I’m still currently the #3 “Bill” on google, behind Gates & Clinton.

I know too many people to be randomly available via phone. I’d never get anything done. Most of what I do requires A LOT of mental processing, as you can tell by these epic posts I keep dropping. I can’t ‘afford’ to get continually taken out of the zone to have random conversations whenever someone feels like contacting me. This is why I herd people towards email or iChat so I can get back to your message when I get back to it. This is why it was so funny to be told that I need to get with the program when it comes to texting, because I’m so far beyond texting. However… Whose problem IS that? :) Is that MY problem, or is that HER problem? Actually, it’s the problem of the person that loses the most if we’re out of contact, which isn’t ME, so that answers that. :)

So we got up to text, and like I said, I missed out on the revolution because I was already on AIM (which became iChat when I ditched PCs hahaha, but that’s another story :D ). At this point, instant messaging services are the final frontier, because you can perfectly craft your socialization experience. You inform people via status update whether you’re online or not, and if so, whether you’re likely to respond to a message they send or not. You can inform them if you’re working or AFK (away from keyboard) or fully welcoming conversation. You can turn sound on or off so if you need to concentrate on writing another epic post, you can still receive messages that don’t break your state. You can have an icon bounce in your tray in case you get a message while you’re AFK and your iChat windows are all hidden. This way, you know to check your new messages. You can start or accept audio conversations or video conversations.

Photo Credit: Rob Boudon

Most importantly, you can carry on several completely different conversations at a time, which you can’t do via audio on a phone. This means that if the person you’re talking to is a slow communicator, it doesn’t matter. They’re not hogging your bandwidth, and you’re talking to six other people while you’re waiting for them to send you something back. It also means that if someone’s a flooder, you can minimize their window and respond to them when you feel like reading the novel they wrote. If people are annoying, you block them so you can go about your day without being disturbed. If you want to find out what’s going on tonight, you can message people in different cliques at the same time and you get back what you get back.

However… If you depend on instant messaging services, you’re at a distinct disadvantage when you go out….

I went over to Ryan’s the other day… specifically NOT pictured here on the right…

And hadn’t bothered to put his cell number in my phone, because I didn’t imagine the party would be in the garden out back and not inside his actual apartment, haha so between that fact and the fact that I hadn’t bothered to charge my phone’s battery, I took a short in that situation, haha :) If I had had a modern phone, I could have emailed him or checked my own email for his number or used any number of services to attempt to bypass the physical barrier of being stuck outside a door, buzzing a buzzer that nobody could hear. :) The same thing happened to me going to Justin’s party…

… but luckily, Amir had to go to the bathroom, so someone was in the apartment to hear me buzzing, haha. :)

The point here is that obviously, communication is returning to the pocket from the computer, except in the form of text and visual information instead of voice. Google Maps, GPS, everything’s going back into people’s pockets, specifically at this point in the form of Blackberry devices and iPhones. This is why the iPhone SDK is such a big deal. You get to create something that people all over the world might buy, because you get to place it in the Apple Store, online.

The next big deal is going to be hand-held video chat, so we’ll see if Apple stops ****ing around and releases an iPhone with the camera in the proper location for people to video chat before someone beats them to the punch and Apple gets the fail whale for once! :D

Do you miss potential job and socialization opportunities by not being randomly accessible or checking voicemail? Yes. Definitely. What you receive in return is increased efficiency and focus. By minimizing my distractions, I probably got this post done in 1/2 the time it would have taken otherwise.

Speaking of the dreaded, yet oft-appearing “Fail Whale”… Twitter has found a new way to not crash so often. That’s to implement Denial of Service when it comes to our @ messages. For people unfamiliar with Twitter, you can send a message to someone’s “replies” folder by using the “@” sign with their username, like “Hey @username, what’s going on tonight?”. If you use the website, like I do, instead of using a standalone client, you find out who sent public messages to your attention or mentioned you in your “replies” folder. Without that folder, all you have is the ten latest pages of Twitter posts from the 800+ people that you follow that you can search through if you feel like it and have time to waste, or you can use search sites like TweetScan and Summize, but you’d better hope THEY were able to pull the entries from Twitter themselves.

So that’s where we stand right now. We live in a world where people expect immediate attention and there are lots of ways for them to get that. Are they entitled to it? No. It’s just that “everybody’s doing it”, so you seem to them to be “odd man out” because your phone has a little alien on it that jumps rope, eats apples, skateboards and takes baths when you open the phone up. :D Meanwhile, the fact of the matter is that I went out for a reason… to hang out with specific people or do specific things. IF having my email on me, and my calendar, and my answering machine, and my instant messaging, and my audio software, and my internet browser, and my quicktime player, and my video compression software was important to me, I would have brought my computer and my EV-DO card with me.

The funny thing is, :) when I finally buy an iPhone, or whatever great all-in-one gadget someone comes out with, that’ll only increase my options for technological offense….

Psychologically, I’m not going to be any more accessible than I am today. :D

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