Thursday, August 30, 2012

Dampa' Tampa



When I played minor league Baseball (really, really minor league... until I was like 6 and decided that I never wanted to play anything remotely resembling sports again), I was on a team called the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, no doubt named after the real team Tampa Bay Devil Rays who were based in Tampa Bay.
Unfortunately, neither team actually used real devil rays.
Because of this, I have always felt a deep connection with Tampa, FL, even though I was from the wrong side of the country and still have yet to actually see the city. So of course, you can imagine how personal it felt for me that the Republican Party, one of the two major political forces in this country, chose to have its National Convention, which only happens once every four years, there. It was almost as if the political leaders were reaching out to me, telling me that they needed me.
Help us, Josh-wan Kenobi. You (yes you, over there in the stylish plaid shirt) are our only hope.
Unless it was all just a joke. Unless the whole Convention really is just some sort of ruse that the GOP set up just to make me feel like I mattered to someone, but decided midway through to turn it into a comedy show. Could it be that they're not really seriously committed to Tampa Bay, and therefore not really committed to me?

But there are two big things that happened on the first day that make me think that I was being led on:

1. "We Built It!"

You may have noticed about a month and a half ago, Obama said something stupid. He said:
"If you've got a business, you didn't build that!" --Barack Obama, July 13, 2012
Now, most of the time a politician says something really stupid or horrifyingly offensive, it makes a lot more sense, and probably a whole lot less offense, when you look at what they said right before or right after.
I'm still waiting for some context that makes this not stupid or offensive.
In fact, since this particular quote is from a 2-minute-57-second video, I highly urge you to watch the whole thing. You can see the point, at 1:42, where he puts his foot so far down his mouth that a team of eight world-class heart surgeons are still trying to find the left shoelace.

"Oh no, get the cardiologists. Make sure there are no soles this time."
But you can also see the part, only about 20 seconds later, at 2:00, where he at least extracts a part of his knee with this far more informative quote:
"The point is, that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together!" --Barack Obama, Same Speech as Above
In fact, if you watch the five or so seconds before his damning sentence, the President is talking about roads and bridges. And later, when asked, he said that "that", which "you" didn't build, was roads and bridges. So basically, he was giving a speech, got a little confused about the order in which he said something, and used "that" to refer to something that was obviously not what he meant.

Sets my mind at ease a little bit, knowing that I indeed do deserve credit for my work, as long as I also give credit to institutions that helped me get where I am.
My business comes up with innovative ways to make ugly brick patterns. This is one of my finest works.
So that cleared that up.

Or did it?

You might have noticed that the big image at the top of this entry is of a woman pointing gleefully at the letter B. I'm guessing that she doesn't have any particular attachment to the second letter of the alphabet, but is instead pointing to the slogan of the entire Republican National Convention!

Seriously, they have made such a big deal out of Obama's grammatical misstep that even the youtube poster who posted the embarrassing video grossly misunderstood its actual meaning (read the info section of the video if you don't believe me). The Romney campaign has made T-shirts, posters, and commercials, all highlighting that gaffe.
That is a practiced hand-motion, one that he could practice more often if government would just stop with their oppressive regulations.
And of course, you can't forget the memes, which range from historical commentary
to speculation on current events
to sheer terror.

There's even an entire website devoted to these memes, called http://didntbuildthat.com/.

So does the GOP take the moral highground and try (probably unsuccessfully) to quash this insane misrepresentation of a grammatical error?

No, they make it their campaign slogan, and almost every speaker uses it in their speech.

2. "F*ck you, Ron Paul!" (I may have taken some artistic liberties with this quote)

Artistic liberties aside, this is effectively what the leading members of the convention said to the Texas senator who is the favorite among libertarians who care more about upholding their philosophy than about voting Obama out of office.
Also, the favorite among Hotties.
But the Republican Party has pretty much decided that they want nothing to do with him, so they decided to change the rules for the RNC to make it impossible for Ron Paul to be nominated as the Republican Party's 2012 candidate. Specifically, they wanted to require that any delegate sent to the convention on behalf of a particular candidate (in this case, Romney) would vote for that candidate, and their votes would be recorded as in favor of that candidate regardless of how they actually vote.

That sounds a bit like abandoning the concept of what a democracy is, and a number of delegates, including many Ron Paul supports, seemed to agree, which is why those delegates voted against the rules change when it was proposed.
This is how voting is done in Tampa. And just in case you can't lip-read, they are saying "No".

In fact, more people voted against the rules change than voted for it. (Read the full article here, in case you're curious.) Sounds like the rules were rejected, right?

Well somehow, John Boehner, who was running the meeting, managed to miss not just a whole bunch, but all of the dissenting votes, and announced that the new rules were to be adopted "without objection", despite the objections of a majority of the people who actually voted.

This is important. This is very important, and I am very surprised that I haven't seen this covered a lot more in the news, because this single event probably shaped the political future of this country. With that action, John Boehner threw away the votes of every voter in this country who supported Ron Paul, or who has hopes that our votes will continue to matter.

Here is my prediction about what will happen to the Republican Party over the next few election cycles:

  • 2012: Obama will win in a landslide because Romney will not be able to get support from the 10% or so of voters who wanted a Paul presidency.
  • 2016: The Republican Party will try to push for another Romney-esque candidate, but will fail and either be forced to nominate Paul (or someone younger but ideologically equivalent to Paul), or will nominate their Romney-esque candidate and lose. Again.
  • 2020: A Paul-like character will win the Republican nomination and probably the presidency (especially if a Dem wins in '16). 
  • And onward: The new political spectrum will range from libertarianism on the right to collectivism on the left. The religious right, which currently dominates the Republican Party, will be a much less influential presence, and social issues like gay marriage will have been fully accepted and uncontroversial.
Okay, let's see where we are in 8 years. Am I a prophet, or just someone with too much time on his hands making nonsensical predictions?
Thank you for answering, image that I found on google image search.
In Other News:

Utah mayor Mia Love demonstrates how to point three times as efficiently.
"The thumb is pointing to God, to remind us that He is everywhere, but especially diagonally up and forward."
Ann Romney tries to prove that her husband is not a robot.
"I swear, Mitt's human! ... Dang it, where's the 'on' button?"
The third most unflattering photo of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is taken.
"Oh god... Oh god... I'm about to blow!"

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