Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Conservative Ad Campaign Hits Trump


"Carnival Sideshow With a 3-Legged Goat"

    And now it starts, finally. Trump has snookered the angry and not too educated and been their pied piper, wildly polling great numbers compared to the supposed serious candidates who would be President of the USA. And like an extended run at the carnival sideshow come to town with a three legged goat, Trump has run rampant using his own money to create a feedback loop into his own distorted and way-overblown ego. And all of it is lapped up by today's so-called News Media night after night, minute after minute. And Trump's unchecked abrasiveness, incredible generalizations and baseless attacks upon just about everything have gone on without anyone or anything seriously calling his hand.

Well, the deep pocketed and take no prisoners conservative "Club For Growth Action"  has started with a million dollar media buy in Iowa for openers to de-fang and discredit Trump with a steady barrage of TV, Radio and Print ads, basically using Trump's own blather, to pull back the curtain for his Oz followers to see what a shallow and unsubstantial man he really is.

Club for Growth is its own renegade right wing power that, " ... beats its own drum."  Here's their first barrage with one of the two :20 second TV ads that are airing in Iowa and several other States.



 



Trump Graphic by Larry Ray

Also See NY Times article by  NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and ALAN RAPPEPORT 

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Quack PAC Backs Trump Dream Team!

  The Republican presidential primary herd of wanna be winners of the GOP Presidential Candidate nomination are kicking up more dust and dirt than a Texas cattle drive. And at the head of the noisy scramble is Mad Bull, Donald Trump, who has now succeeded in insulting and infuriating all but the still active and sizable far right and angry fringe Tea Party dregs. 

  Trump set off a firestorm of criticism, even from the GOP, as he insulted Senator John McCain's military service and years as a POW in Hanoi by snidely uttering, "He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” His insane tirades and gaffes continue almost hourly.


  Now it has been rumored that a special Political Action Committee is putting together their Dream Team of Trump for President with infamous Texas Congressman, Louie Gohmert, as his Vice President**. One can only imagine what their campaign materials would look like.


**For those not familiar with Louie Gohmert, who represents the East Texas 1stDistrict including Tyler Texas and his monopoly on raving madly into any available CSPAN or Fox News TV camera see: The Huff Post Gohmert Files


Graphic by Larry Ray

Friday, July 10, 2015

Let's See the Two-Headed Cow. . . again!

The great American Sideshow for 2016!

I first published this on April 11, 2011.  I now am posting it again, unchanged except for the names in the next to last paragraph. It works as well today, or perhaps even better, than it did four years ago. See what you think!

America has always had a fringe element of nuttiness but most everyone knew it was nuttiness and not to be taken seriously. Before today's instant mass communication, conspiracy claims, wild headlines, mean gossip and outright lies was mostly the stuff of checkout aisle tabloid newspapers. Today many people can't, or refuse to tell the difference.

Nightly prime time TV programs take the lowest road, from the intellectually light weight "Biggest Losers," where morbidly obese people vie weekly to see who has lost the most weight, to "Reality Shows" documenting unreal races, contests and nail-biting competitor eliminations.

The reality is that these carefully scripted competitions are shot with huge film crews hovering all around, documenting supposed intimate spontaneous adventures that have nothing whatsoever to do with reality.

But millions of people never miss these nightly shows. And, sadly, many of these viewers make little distinction between reality and total hogwash both while watching TV, as well as surfing the internet and emailing wild electronic missives back and forth to one another. These minimally discerning and vocal folks have become a new and easily manipulated political bloc.

So when Donald Trump, New York real estate developer, marketing mogul and reality show producer popped up all over Television recently, saying he should be our next president, lots of folks thought that was a great idea. The next day's polls ranked him number two behind favored Republican nominee, Mitt Romney.

Never mind that Trump's eccentric, egomaniacal ranting, including questioning President Obama American legal citizenship, was not a serious testing of the political waters at all. It was an age-old carnival barker ballyhoo designed to "turn the tip."

"Turning the tip" is old carny lingo meaning to attract the gawking townsfolk meandering on the carnival midway to a specific attraction . . . almost always the sideshow. The barker, usually wearing a straw pork pie hat, would taunt, tease and invite, "Have you seen Bossie! The world's only living two-headed cow? It's all on the inside! Step right up. Be among the few who will ever see a living, breathing two-headed cow! Only ten cents, a thin dime, limited viewing, so step right up!"

And people dug into their pockets for that dime, crowding the barker's ticket stand while another carny quickly opened then closed a corner of the canvas entrance flap offering surreptitious peeks at the bizarre wonders inside.

Once jammed in the tent, people were led quickly past a dimly lit rude stall with a straw floor where a badly stuffed small cow sporting a bit of creative taxidermy stood motionless. The "professor" inside the tent repeated Bossie's astounding medical history all the while urging folks to move along, offering, for only a nickle more, the rare chance to see Jargo the dog-faced boy.

Next day at school the two-headed cow was all anyone could talk about. Everyone knew someone who had seen this mutant marvel the night before. Various accounts had the cow being milked while one head slept and the other ate. I imagine that had anyone brought it up at our 50th class reunion, many would have still remembered seeing that two-headed cow ... or someone who had.

Trump doesn't actually want to be president, not for a minute. But he does want to "turn the tip" of voters wandering the American political carnival midway into his own private tent to gorge his own insatiable ego and sense of power. It is Trump's own personal real-time reality show.

In an America where, for a disturbingly high percentage of our population, the misrepresented, trite and false has become reality, it was a no-brainer for Trump. The ridiculously coiffed megalomaniac is already part of today's media side show and well knows all the divisive ballyhoo to spout.


{Updated for 2016 primary race} When daytime radio and cable TV's stock-in-trade is non-stop coverage of a corral full of two-headed cows of varying levels of outrageousness like Sarah Palin Ted Cruz, Michelle Bachman Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, and even Michael Bickelmeyer who, as president would deploy weapons to fry terrorists and drug traffickers from orbit, they all become the norm and it becomes a challenge to find a really unusual two-headed cow.

So, instead of summarily dismissing Trump as a wealthy blowhard, America's mainstream media instead, day after day, touts this new, particularly outrageous, bellowing two-headed cow ... because two-headed cows still always attract viewers, especially if they have bad hair.

 Graphic by Larry Ray  thanks to Australia's Mutant Barnyard freak show.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Kemper Coal: Plan to Add New Revenue


   Mississippi Power Company's "clean coal" Kemper County Energy Facility's cost overruns now have become a regular bad news story in local newspapers. Original project cost of $2 billion has ballooned to $6.4 billion and is still growing like kudzu. The Supreme Court forced the company to refund $350 million in refunds to its 186,000 customers, money that was part of an illegal rate increase.

   South Mississippi electric power co-ops have already bailed out of their planned 15 percent share of the Kemper coal plant and MS Power has agreed to refund their $275 million in deposits, plus interest. Top management is reportedly continuing to “explore future financing options.”  

   Their most promising "future financing option" is said to involve a quiet partnership between Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey and MS Power Company designed to produce "a projected long term revenue stream."
 
   The plan uses a clever PR approach which takes advantage of the well established public image of the Kemper project as a "white elephant" by actually exhibiting one of the rare white pachyderms on lease from Ringling Brothers.

   In the photo above, the white elephant, called Captain Kempie, seems to have a free run of the plant's white elephant area and a large circus tent has already been erected. Tickets reportedly go on sale "soon" statewide for a chance for the whole family to "see a white elephant up close," both under the big top . . . and all around it. Kids will each get a free red Mississippi Power Cost Cap!

Friday, February 20, 2015

Obama: A Tree Grows in Delhi

Sapling planted by Barack Obama at Ghandhi Memorial in New Delhi


On January 20th, 2015, Pres. Obama planted a peepal fig tree in New Delhi, India. Now, a month later, the local Indian media are blasting officials "for letting it die." The very popular native fig tree, Ficus religiosa,  dropped all its leaves shortly after its planting and is now a tall, lonely, spindly single stalk. But local horticulturists insist is not dead at all but is setting new buds which will start to bloom soon.

The tree is also known as the Bo Tree, under which the Buddha sat and became a supremely enlightened teacher. It has special leaves which have a long extended drip tip. The tree is considered sacred by followers of Buddhism. Interestingly, the tree's leaves move continuously even when there is no perceptible wind blowing! The phenomenon is explained due to the quite long stalks on the leaves, but the faithful attribute the movement of the leaves in dead calm air to "devas" or "gods" that reside in the leaves. Some Americans are said to believe that the strange leaf movement is signaling "the end of days," or even a new Watch Tower emphatic claim!

Republicans and others are already shouting and spouting jaundiced nonsense suggesting President Obama may have dropped his leaves. The perennial bile-spewing, failed Pol., Rudy Giuliani, has even claimed that because of President Obama's more intellectual public call for reason instead of waving his arms and shouting firebrand rhetoric, the President "doesn't love America."

Could it be that Obama stuffed a handful of the leaves into his coat pocket to bring back to some of his detractors? The leaves are used in traditional medicine and are especially useful for those suffering from jaundice ... like Speaker John Boehner whose dark yellowish jaundiced facial coloration actually may not be from daily visits to a tanning salon after all! And the Peepal leaf also helps control the excessive amount of urine released during jaundice. Imagine seeing Mr. Boehner with a normal healthy looking pink glow! Imagine Boehner, Giuliani and their ilk not continually peeing on their own boots! Obama is patiently and calmly watching all this and may be handing out the metaphoric leaves soon.

The trees can grow to almost 100 feet in height.

Footnote: In March, 2000, President Bill Clinton and Daughter Chelsea participated in a tree planting in the same Gandhi Memorial Park. Clinton's tree is reportedly tall, sturdy and still growing.