Mike’s Big Money Politics — Something to Talk About

Today Mike helps John Edwards.

Tomorrow is a day of great significance in the state of New Hampshire. After Tuesday January 8th, eighty percent of Granite State diners and coffee shops close until the 2012 presidential election cycle begins in mid-2009 and swarms of candidates and media folk return.

There are also two local elections fraught with cosmic consequence tomorrow, the New Hampshire Democratic and Republican Presidential Primaries. These events will provide a welcome economic boost for two crucial American industries, Polling and Spinning. If disaster struck New Hampshire tomorrow, ninety percent of the world’s known spinmeisters and pollsters would be eliminated. I shudder to consider the consequences for our Republic.

The New Hampshire primaries do not determine the U.S. presidency, of course, but play a vital role in the democratic process. These few puny votes constrain and direct the flow of campaign contributions as it becomes a mighty, gushing, billion-dollar river, flowing swiftly through PACs and campaign committees to revitalize our impoverished multi-national media conglomerates, buying the advertising that underwrites the publication and broadcasting of the celebrity gossip, biased opinions, reality shows and syndicated reruns and on which this Great Nation has come to depend.

Cost-Cutting at NASA – The Huckabee Way

The New York Times ran a New Year’s Eve profile of NASA Director Dr. S. Allen Stern. This is hardly surprising, of course, to anyone who knows that news outlets save science features for holidays, when no one reads the paper anyway.

In any case, the hallmark of Dr. Stern’s eight-month-old tenure at NASA is denial (if not rollback) of cost over-runs. Dr. Stern thinks the “that was then, this is now” cost over-run rationale is not acceptable from scientists and engineers, who should be able to add these factors into original budgets and timetables. To some this would indicate Dr. Stern’s shocking lack of experience in the political sphere.

GOP Pseudo-Event

 

The news media are chock-full of reports about a cable-TV quiz show featuring the Republican candidates who will compete in Iowa’s up-coming Presidential Tupperware® Party in five weeks.

This was said to be newsworthy, perhaps because TV scriptwriters are on strike and Wednesday’s other televised squabbles were even more boring.

Image of last night’s thrilling event by Mike Licht. Thanks to CNN, GOP, YouTube, yadda yadda.  Tupperware is a registered trademark of, um, Tupperware, whose parties are much more consequential than the Iowa caucuses. There, I’ve said it.

Mike’s Big Money Politics: Clean Green

In this installment, Mike helps Mike Huckabee.

21^st Century Americans are global citizens, drinking in news of world events with their shade-grown morning brew.  Between weather and traffic reports, our big-screen Chinese TVs show us a world in ferment. We stare in shock and recognition at news events in countries we know well from the labels in our favorite garments. Can Democracy flourish in these far-off lands?  Will Gap have to make those pants somewhere else?

Every four years, U.S. citizens survey contenders for the Highest Office in the Free World and think, “What’s with that hair?” They also wonder who best can cope with situations where the slightest diplomatic misstep could bring higher prices at Wal-Mart or cut off our crucial flow of baseball All-Stars from the Caribbean and Japan.