Kinky Friedman endorses Rick Perry:
These days, of course, I would support Charlie Sheen over Obama. Obama has done for the economy what pantyhose did for foreplay. Obama has been perpetually behind the curve. If the issue of the day is jobs and the economy, Rick Perry is certainly the nuts-and-bolts kind of guy you want in there. Even though my pal and fellow Texan Paul Begala has pointed out that no self-respecting Mexican would sneak across the border for one of Rick Perry’s low-level jobs, the stats don’t entirely lie. Compared with the rest of the country, Texas is kicking major ass in terms of jobs and the economy, and Rick should get credit for that, just as Obama should get credit for saying “No comment” to the young people of the Iranian revolution.
…So would I support Rick Perry for president? Hell, yes! As the last nail that hasn’t been hammered down in this country, I agree with Rick that there are already too damn many laws, taxes, regulations, panels, committees, and bureaucrats. While Obama is busy putting the hyphen between “anal” and “retentive” Rick will be rolling up his sleeves and getting to work.
I’m still ambivalent. I’m sure that there will be things he’ll do that infuriate me, but at least he’ll end the ongoing wreckage of the economy. Oh, and on the subject of science and politicians? Given a choice between a politician who understands how the economy works and one who believes in evolution, I’ll take a young earther. I need to write a longer essay about this.
[Update a few minutes later]
The rubes continue to come out of the closet:
It is no surprise that many have begun to doubt the president’s leadership qualities. J.P. Morgan calls it the “competency crisis.” The president is not seen fighting for his own concrete goals, nor finding the right allies, especially leaders of business big or small. Instead, his latent hostility to the business community has provoked a mutual response of disrespect. This is lamentable given the unique role that small business especially plays in creating jobs.
The president appears to consider himself immune from error and asserts the fault always lies elsewhere—be it in the opposition in Congress or the Japanese tsunami or in the failure of his audience to fully understand the wisdom and benefits of his proposals. But in politics, the failure of communication is invariably the fault of the communicator.
Many voters who supported him are no longer elated by the historic novelty of his candidacy and presidency. They hoped for a president who would be effective. Remember “Yes We Can”? Now many of his sharpest critics are his former supporters. Witness Bill Broyles, a one-time admirer who recently wrote in Newsweek that “Americans aren’t inspired by well-meaning weakness.” The president who first inspired with great speeches on red and blue America now seems to lack the ability to communicate any sense of resolve for a program, or any realization of the urgency of what might befall us. The teleprompter he almost always uses symbolizes and compounds his emotional distance from his audience.
We lack a coherent and muscular economic strategy, as Mr. Obama and his staff seem almost completely focused on his re-election. He should be spending most of his time on the nitty-gritty of the job instead of on fund raisers, bus tours and visits to diners, which essentially are in service of his political interests. Increasingly his solutions seem to boil down to Vote for Me.
That’s all they ever were.
Is it immature to say “I told you so”? OK, call me immature. You were fools to vote for him the first time and I said so at the time.
[Update a couple minutes later]
“Obama is no Steve Jobs.” You can say that again:
It’s dawning on many Americans that they made a bad hire. Obama was slick and seductive in the interview that stretched from early 2007 to November 2008; the competition was unexciting and, to be blunt, old. But it turned out he had no real job skills, didn’t get along with others, failed to translate rhetoric into action and became blinded by his own ego.
The lesson here is an existential one: Leaders are what they do. They become revered because they perform, understand their market, show creativity, deliver unexpected gains and beat the competition. The star quality follows accomplishments and performance.
Of course, it dawned on many long ago, and some of us (as noted above) predicted it.
[Update later morning]
Fox, meet chickens:
Shapiro goes on to list the things about Perry that most drive liberals nuts, including “anti-intellectualism,” the “God card,” the “living Constitution” (“Perry stands out for his creative cut-and-paste approach to the Constitution”), the “pistol-packing president,” and “daring to call it treason.”
His point, of course, is not only to whack Perry for his (by liberal standards) “extreme” positions, but to gore the Left as well for, among other things, its education fetish, its mortal fear of genuine religious belief, and its abject terror in the face of the inanimate objects we like to call firearms.
Of course, what most liberals don’t realize is, to us these things aren’t bugs — they’re features of a possible Perry presidency. Any prez who would pack heat while jogging with his dog and blow away a varmint or two is okay in our book. Sure beats cowering before a killer rabbit, Carter-style.
Walter obliquely makes an even more important point: that the coming election is likely to be a stark choice between Ivy League credentialism and a form of prairie populism. And that, of course, is precisely what the next election must be about.
Many of my lefty buddies simply cannot conceive of a world in which an Aggie can whup up on a Harvard lad, and merrily call global warming a crock (but . . . it’s settled science!). People like Perry and Palin and Bachmann — hillbillies from flyover country or Outer Slobbovia — send them into towering rages of wounded and unappreciated virtue; never mind that their “virtues” are generally invisible to those of us in the reality-based community. After nearly three years of their pet policy prescriptions, we’ve had a belly full.
I know I have.
“…his latent hostility to the business community…”
I think he meant “blatant,” not “latent.”
I am STILL stymied by the ongoing comparison of Perry to RINO Romney. And the ongoing plan to ignore anyone BUT Romney that the MslimeM has been putting out there. Both of them were Write Ins AND there wrec 5 (five) people who polled above, some of whom are STILL beating Romney’s numbers.
It’s as if the Emperor no longer cares that we KNOW he’s buck @$$ naked, parading down the street, carrying a sign saying,
.
.
LOOK at ME!! .
I’m BUCK @$$
Naked!
.
.
Anyone who spends two seconds looking will see that the ‘story’ the media is pushing, Perry vs Romney, is a construct. Just as anyone from the Right WILL take an honest look at the numbers during the election cycle, the Left will do the same! So who are they attempting to fool? Why the propaganda?
If Ayn Rand had believed in God(s), she’d be smiling down on this insanity this very minute.
Got a nit to pick with you Rand. Belief in divine creation in no way disputes evolution, so saying that Perry does not believe in evolution assumes facts not in evidence. Darwin had no for explanation how life began – his theory is entirely mute on the subject, and no modern interpretation of the theory has addressed it. They do not even have evidence of lesser mammals evolving into primates – the missing link has never been found. I trust that it exists, but belief in it as fact is about as scientific as the Bible.
Now, if the guy had said that Adam was dodging Velociraptors I would agree with you, but he has never said any such thing.
A bit off topic but to address Michael Gersh, “no modern interpretation of the theory has addressed it. They do not even have evidence of lesser mammals evolving into primates.”
Well, they did actually find a fossilized lemur that they believe is a missing link to primates.
I was making a general comment. Unlike many of his panicked attackers, I have no idea what Rick Perry believes.
They do not even have evidence of lesser mammals evolving into primates – the missing link has never been found. I trust that it exists, but belief in it as fact is about as scientific as the Bible.
I don’t believe in “missing links.” Every animal is a link between its ancestors and its descendants. As someone once said here, some people will never be satisfied until every animal climbs on top of its parents to die. It is a perfectly reasonable inference that if there are “missing links,” it is an artifact of a sparse fossil record. I’m not aware of any other scientific explanation for it.
Kinky Friedman has never quite taken himself seriously, and you shouldn’t either. However, it’s nice to know Perry has the Texas Jewboy vote. 🙂
Kinky Friedman may be eccentric and liberal, but any one who can write, “Obama has done for the economy what pantyhose did for foreplay” can’t be all bad. He sounds like a fun guy to swap stories over some beers.
However, it’s nice to know Perry has the Texas Jewboy vote.
One of my coworkers is from Texas and is a Jew. He’s a huge Perry fan. I don’t know how large the Texas Jewish demographic is, but it is amusing to think Perry might win their votes.
I have relatives in Texas, but, since they are very religious Jews, they have been republicans all along.
On evolution – there really is no part of the theory that postulates how novel creatures come into existence – all natural selection describes is a way to incorporate small changes into the next generation. Darwin himself thought that all creatures were naturally selected, and thus somewhat changed, versions of the creatures on Noah’s Ark. And when we get to the creation of the very first viable living cell, well, if God didn’t do it, there is nothing in the evolutionary literature than describes the process. Three and a half billion years ago, bacteria arrived, or emerged – but from what?
On evolution – there really is no part of the theory that postulates how novel creatures come into existence – all natural selection describes is a way to incorporate small changes into the next generation.
I don’t know what this means. A lot of small changes eventually add up to big changes. Every animal is a transitional animal.
Living in Texas, right now, I’ll trade you Kinky and Perry for a 6″ rain.
“Every animal is a transitional animal.”
That’s what makes crocodylia and sharks so amazing.
In science, you know what you know, you do not know what you do not know. The belief in a supreme being comes from the same part of the brain that posits that the dearth of missing links is explainable. In the fossil record there are all manner of gradations in animals that are clearly from natural selection, yet the leap from a Lemur to an Ape is not there. No evidence exists for any but the smallest changes, and of those we have a plethora of fossils.
We can describe every step from the big bang to the present universe, based on evidence and math. We cannot describe the leap from a puddle filled with amino acids to a single functioning and dividing cell. Evolution does not describe it. There is something else that happens, or happened. We do not know. God’s creation is as good an explanation as any science I have seen. I do not like that explanation, since it does not describe the genesis of God himself, but I have a hard time with those who put the believers down, when they have no better explanation to counter it.
One thing I do know – it will rain again in Texas. It will rain so hard that people will die from floods. That’s known from science and observation. When Perry decides to doubt that, then I will worry about his “strange” beliefs. Until then, he seems to be in the mainstream on creation and global warming, so I do not know why people are so worried about him.
One thing about the fossil record is to note how few creatures actually become fossils when they die. For example, in the early 1800s, people reported that the buffalo herds in the great plains states were reported to be millions of animals. It was said that when they ran, the ground shook. You’d think that with that many animals, the ground would be covered with buffalo bones and you couldn’t dig a hole anywhere without encountering buffalo fossils. That isn’t the case. While huge herds of animals lived there for thousands of years, only a very small percentage of them became fossils.
“Texas Jewboy” is a satirical self-reference by Friedman. He gained initial fame – of a sort – back in the seventies heading a band he called Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys. It was a play on the name of a famous Texas swing band called Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Friedman has always been one part comic and one part social commentator.
“the competition was unexciting and, to be blunt, old.”
It is sad that we don’t have much respect for old people these days. They should up the age required to be president to 50.
Don’t confuse evolution with the origin of life–they’re two different subjects, yet I often see creationists lumping evolution and abiogenesis and the big bang into the same argument (usually an argument from incredibility).
So, yeah, evolution doesn’t explain the origin of life, any more than English Lit explains quantum mechanics.
“God’s creation” has no explanatory value–it’s essentially saying “it is because it is”. There’s nothing to falsify it, but there’s nothing to support it. I wouldn’t call it as good an explanation as any science has to offer–it requires something way outside of what has been demonstrated in the lab.
Is “God did it” really a better explanation than “We don’t know”?
Most brands of Creationism, in isolationism, is mostly harmless in a politician – and even Young Earth Creationism would not be intolerable. But Young Earth Creationism, plus absolute denial of any form of anthropogenic warming, plus e.g. an apparent eagerness to execute Cameron Willingham, suggest a rejection of empirical reality in favor of political ideology. That which would be convenient to the GOP if true, will be believed true until proven otherwise, and those attempting to offer such proof will be rejected from the fold as Unclean.
None of us is certain what crises our next president will have to face. But I’d rather they be faced by a RINO who lives in the real world, than a true believer who can’t be dragged out of the “GOP Utopia” scenario on the holodeck.
I wasn’t too keen on Jimmy Carter’s Born Again Christianism when he was president–I didn’t know if he would trust to his God to protect us in a crisis or actively work to prevent one.
But it’s pretty clear that we have one heck of a financial crisis looming right now. I’d vote for anyone short of Jeremiah Scudder now, so long as they were a fiscal conservative.
We have a heck of a financial crisis looming right now, and zero possibility of electing a supermajority of fiscal conservatives in both houses of Congress in time to fix it. It would, I submit, be unwise to vote for anyone who is unwilling or unable to effectively negotiate with, gasp, liberals, in finding and implementing solutions to the financial crisis.
And given the limits to the actual power of the presidency, negotiate does mean compromise.
I suppose one might vote for Perry in hopes that he has secret blackmail files sufficient to convince even Dianne Feinstein to support privatizing social security, but that gets you into Scudder territory…
So you’re talking about getting involved in the primaries? By the time the primaries are over it’s usually pretty clear which candidate is the worst of two evils. My state doesn’t have open primaries, so I’d have to officially register as an R to make a difference. I suppose I should hold my nose and do it.