Friday, February 17, 2012

IDIOT PUNDITOCRACY "Wisdom": "Sparta"!? WTF ...

It stems from this typical Beltway Media article. Check out its imposing graphic and intro subhead: "The Romney and Obama campaigns, mirror-image juggernauts, eye each other warily. “Big, disciplined, and ruthlessly efficient.” Okay.

It's a pro-Romney, ridiculously triumphalist propaganda piece — sourced by a GOP hack and a Hillary 2008 operative who has already proclaimed Romney the nominee — posing as an inside look with silly, often hilarious pseudo-insights such as these:
The officials’ experience has eliminated most of the kinks and leaks that dog more amateur operations, and each campaign is run like a kind of soulless machine — devoid of spontaneity, and utterly allergic to anything that takes them off message. 
Hmm ... That works. Especially the dog and "message" part. Brilliant.
Team Romney’s stingy record of access to the candidate, dubbed the “Mittness Protection Program,” has led Romney to go several days without taking reporters’ questions. Obama, meanwhile, uses technology to avoid the White House press corps. 
There's more than "stingy" in the MPP; It's more like unbridled staffer panic whenever Mittens has a mic thrust in his face. The President hasn't avoided the press at all. He's the President.
"The Romney campaign is adept at rolling out endorsements at exactly the right time, trying to step on their opponents' message...and being able to dominate the news cycle or grab it back if they feel like it's time," Daou said. "Clearly, that's something they learned from the Obama campaign."
Yeah, like the Christine O'Donnell and Donald Trump endorsements. Brilliant.
Alex Castellanos: “It is incredibly difficult to build overnight huge, multi-million dollar enterprises, businesses the size of major companies, and make them run efficiently. Both have demonstrated the ability to do that... and both campaigns have built cults around their candidates, seeing them as transformational leaders.
HAHAHA!
Staffers say Romney approaches politics with the same deliberate decision-making that made him a star in the investment consulting world. He crunches the numbers, then confidently makes his best bet supported by the data. To him, running a presidential campaign—like running anything else—comes down to simply math.
Please. Pass the shovel.
“To make a good movie, my Hollywood friends tell me, you want the hero and villain to be similar as possible, not as different as imaginable, because they are ultimately fighting for the same thing: money, power, or the girl,” Castellanos said. “[Obama and Romney] just come at the same goal from different directions. We are making a very good movie in 2012.”
Repugnant Republican values on display. Pass the BARF bag.
"Romney, like Obama, has tried to and succeeded to some degree in being able to be an extremely efficient attack candidate with a smile on his face," he said. "It never seems to come back to him."
It's easy when Romney denies the attacks and there are no fingerprints or disclosures to assign responsibility to Romney's SuperPac funders. It's easy to be a millionaire coward.
With two campaigns marked by striking message discipline—and two candidates who rarely roam off-script—every rare gaffe, no matter how small, will be a cue for the opponent to pounce.
HAHAHA!
"I think it will be a real battle," said Daou, looking forward to the general election. "This period has been good for President Obama, but I think once Romney becomes the nominee, it becomes a much tighter, closer, more hard-fought race."
"... once Romney becomes the nominee." Here it is, in a nutshell. The presumptuous, arrogant Beltway Media narrative masquerading as legitimate journalism to re-inculcate Romney's "inevitability."

What this tells me is that the idiots invested in such imagery don't really want to see Rick Santorum butt in and break it up. Therefore, as far as they're concerned, the die is cast, this goose is cooked, the cake is baked. Beltway clichés, off the top of my head, the latter from Chuckles Toddy whose ridiculous and annoying promo is become a nuisance of late.

Therefore, the state of Maine and its caucus makeover has tumbled down the rabbit hole in near-Beltway blackout. The Beltway narrative is a Romney-Santorum showdown in Michigan, with a huge Romney money advantage; not Romney critically hobbled by Ron Paul in Maine, sparking panic in the GOP Establishment as it scrambles furiously for Plan B to (a) get full throttle behind Santorum, or (b) avoid a brokered convention.

As the specter of Sarah Palin looms:


That woman is, indeed, AN IDIOT.

Speaking of, the Beltway Media narrative is all in with the inexorable political killing machine of the Romney SuperPac, variously described as the "Dresden carpet bombing," the "Death Star," and now, most aburd of all: "Sparta."

Here's why. Any student of Ancient History who knows about the Sparta-Athens rivalry would recognize the faulty metaphor, as it applies to Romney. Let's be clear: Romney and his SuperPac would be Athens, not Sparta. Athens though not known for its military prowess, was the political and cultural leader of Greek civilization, able to amass the necessary resources to win its foreign wars. Though defeated by the Spartans in the Pelloponesian war, Athens rallied in league with some "big donors" including foreign "assets" like Persia. Athens ally Thebes handed Sparta its first land defeat in the battle of Leuctra. It was the beginning of the end of Spartan "hegemony."

In our Civil War, Athens and its allies would be the Union side to the more colorful and flamboyant Confederacy. The South had the best generals and fiercest fighters but the North had unlimited industrial resources to grind down and eventually overwhelm the South. It had its good generals too, and soldiers who were just as brave as the rebels. Sparta, conversely, was a lean and mean fighting machine, with limitations. Most importantly, it was landlocked, lacking the natural resources, ports, and commercial wealth to sustain an empire.

Sparta's last stand at the Battle of Thermopylae against a massive invading Persian army is where its legend began. King Leonidas leading 300 Spartans and some 1,100 allies held off thousands of Persians, inflicting heavy casualties before finally being encircled and felled. But they had bought precious time for the Greek city-states to rally behind Sparta and defeat Persia in the Battle of Plataea. In a sense, the Spartan (another word for frugal) triumph saved Western Civilization from Persian imperialism.

The love and admiration of Sparta is known as "Laconophilia." Considering Mitt Romney's weird self-description as "severely conservative," this "Sparta" meme associated with his SuperPac's political warring ways may not be entirely incidental. Unfortunately for Mittens, the "severe" moniker which also means "spartan" didn't take given how ludicrous the word-match to the goofy candidate. Instead, it was severely mocked.

Sparta and its warrior class is the very antithesis of Romney and his SuperPac. They were austere, virtuous, disciplined, focusing on superior military training to overcome their enemies' advantage in  numbers. They practiced pederasty (polygamy ... hmm ... weighing, weighing) and looked more like OWS demonstrators, long-haired and unwashed, than Mitt Romney's country club pals.

"Sparta" — Really!? Here's the processed tripe that is consumed unquestioningly by the lazy idiots of the Beltway Media. It's as swollen a rotting political carcass as anything GOP spin hack Alex Castellanos is capable of regurgitating:
“Both are big, disciplined, ruthlessly efficient enterprises,” said Republican strategist Alex Castellanos. “Obama is not very good at being president, but he is relentless at wanting to be president. Romney’s campaign is similarly like a bulldozer. It overwhelms opponents tactically, with money, TV, and power, crushing movable objects with irresistible force.”
In a word: Bullshit. Sparta!? Pick your poison, Einsteins. Read your history.

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