Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Schadenfreude Returns

A running theme of the Spew has been pleasure at the suffering of others.  Hey, I am honest about it.
Well, how about this:

H/T to KS for his facebook posting plus the observations he attached (what a mess, Santorum is brown, what a mess).  

I have enjoyed the train wreck that is the Republican primary process.  If there was ever a party that deserved such awful candidates, well, it is the one that prefers the US to lose than to have Obama have any successes.  So, I am most delighted.  Of course, just because each of these guys and gal are tainted by all of their collective stupidity and pandering does not mean Obama is assured of a victory.  Hardly, given the economy and the likely Euro-induced tailspin, but this table reminds me of a salient fact that I had to shout at my family during the Thanksgiving weekend (as much as I hate talking US politics with my family):*

There has not been a single vote cast or delegate decided yet.  All
the surveys are, well, if we quote George RR Martin, "wind."  Nothing has really happened except for a few candidates imploding (Herman Cain's unintentional comedy parade may be ending this week).  So, we have a horse race that has essentially past the first pole but not much beyond that.  Each primary/caucus will cause the media to spin in a different direction, and those things actually distribute something (delegates, I think, in addition to unkeepable promises, pain and suffering).  So, I would like to ask the American media to chill the tabernacle out.

*  I hate talking US politics with my family not because they are right-wing but because they are all on the same part of the political spectrum (left or center-left) and proceed to have loud, repeated discussions about stuff where they all agree.  One of the gifts of the election of Obama was that it stopped the talk about the 2000 election.  I tended up teaching a bunch of my very young nieces poker about seven years ago as I was watching the World Series of Poker to avoid the annual gnashing about the election Bush stole.

Anyway, let's enjoy the schadenfreude song as the GOP candidates burn.







1 comment:

R. William Ayres said...

It's interesting to see in graphic form what we have been seeing in running narrative: every contender who has had a "meteoric rise" has had just a rapid of a collapse. So far, three have followed this pattern: Bachmann, Perry, and Cain. Gingrich is on the upswing part now. Is there any evidence that he will avoid the fate of the others? Romney seems to be the balancer - the other side of the zero-sum equation (so when someone else crashes, he does better, all things being equal).