Bobby Jindal Announces His Presidential Candidacy. (crickets)

Wow. I mean, wow. John Stewart, among many others, has been skewering Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindals’ presidential announcement ad, so I new I needed to see it for myself. I just watched it, and…wow.

Shot from the perspective of a Go Pro wearing cat caught in a tree, the video is a one long take of Jindal and his family sitting around a table in their backyard. Bobby, his face obscured by a tree limb, announces TO HIS CHILDREN that he’s going to run for President.  The kids respond with the same enthusiasm you might expect from a “Mommy and Daddy are getting a divorce” announcement, which is pretty much total silence.

From the man who once said the Republican Party should stop being the “stupid” party, this is one of the dumbest stunts I’ve ever seen from a politician in any party.  It’s wrong on so many levels you’d need a calculator to count them all.

It’s clear that this was an attempt by handlers to make Jindal look “folksy” and “genuine” within a casual family gathering. Got it. And that is the first problem with this video. Casual family gatherings are normally where people talk about very mundane, day-to-day activities, like what happened at school or work or who’s dating whom. How many family gatherings have you been to where someone announces he is running for President of the United States? That would be zero.  Okay, Jindal makes one, which is what makes this concept so preposterous and contrived.

Now, if you were taping a Presidential announcement vid, and the premise is that you are making the announcement first to your family, wouldn’t you want the children to be excited that Daddy might one day be President of the U.S.? In Jindal’s video, however, the kids sit in stunned silence, with one of the boy’s giving his Dad an awkward thumbs up.  Now you or I or anyone with an IQ over 70 would say, “Hey, let’s try that again with a little more enthusiasm.” But the geniuses in the Jindal camp must have thought the genuineness of the moment was a positive thing. How very, very wrong they were.

And what are we to make of Jindal announcing his presidential ambitions to children, and using that as his announcement to the nation at large? Is he comparing the American voters to children? Does he think he needs to make his announcement simple enough for a seven-year old to understand?

I could go on, but I’ll end with a technical issue, but a rather large one in my opinion. I don’t know how much the media buy was for Bobby’s announcement, but would you or anyone else spend tens of thousands of dollars placing a video promoting your candidate in prime time where his face is obscured by a tree limb?  Genuine moment or not, this is a major no no. It comes off as totally amateurish rather than a warm family moment. Do you think the American people are so familiar with Jindal that he doesn’t need to show his face? Bobby Jindal?

Jindal’s announcement ad deserves all of the ridicule it is getting. It’s mawkish, amateurish and displays an epic amount of poor judgment on the part of the candidate and his team. And, I’m sure, accurately reflects Bobby Jindal’s character to a T.

Donald tRUMP enters the fray

Ted Cruz is running for President. Now that’s entertainment.

Ted Cruz announced he is running for President today. One of the sleaziest, most obnoxious, low-functioning members of Congress has chosen to waste everyone’s time by jetting around the country for the next year-and-a-half putting his ignorance on display like a freak show exhibit and making children cry.

Cruz isn’t considered a front-runner for the Republican nomination, but on planet Tea Party, this has nothing to do with his medieval belief system, but everything to do with whom the Koch’s are going to choose to rain their money down on. Apparently, Cruz isn’t at the top of that list.

Don’t think for a minute that Cruz couldn’t become the Republican nominee. As the campaign heats up and other presidential hopefuls throw their tri-corner hats in the ring, we will be treated to an inter-party battle where combatants heatedly exchange lies in a ring of ignorance. Cruz should do very well at this stage, but the money men are looking for a Republican who can go from throwing red meat to the Tea Party crowd in the primary to someone who can resemble a sane person in the general election. This could be Cruz’s Achilles heel.

And then there’s that face. Those droopy eyebrows, that painful-looking smile, that creepy squint, Cruz is the store manager you never want to be caught alone with in the back room, regardless of your sex.

All of that being said, the Republican primary should be chock full of entertainment as candidates sever ties to their brains and work to impress Tea Party members with their ignorance, heartlessness, and bigotry. Should be fun.

Republican candidates in a race to the bottom of the intellectual barrel

There are days, actually a lot of days, when I feel as though I’m living in a nightmare of collective insanity. Everywhere I turn in this dark theatre, there is someone on stage saying things that are incomprehensibly stupid, but the audience applauds as if he or she is the president of MENSA. In my nightmare, ignorance is rewarded and knowledge debased.

I feel that way after reading a quote from Republican presidential contender Ben Carson. In a CNN interview, he said that homosexuality was absolutely a choice. How does he know this?

"A lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight — and when they come out, they're gay. So, did something happen while they were in there? Ask yourself that question," he said.

This may sound like something one of the Duck Dynasty hillbillies might say, but Ben Carson isn’t some backwoods hick with a microphone, he’s a freaking neurosurgeon!  A brain surgeon! Here is a highly educated man, a serious contender for the most important job in America espousing views that make Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne sound like Harvard professors.

Of course, he’s only doing what he has to do to win the approval of the intellectually stunted, rage-filled Tea Baggers who have taken control of his party. That fact alone tells you a tremendous amount about the quality of political discourse in America in the twenty-first century. One of our two major political parties has forsaken reality for a fantasyland built on a foundation of wishful thinking, anger, superstition and bigotry. It’s their dream world, but to everyone else it’s a living nightmare.

Republicans Polled: Top Presidential Picks Include Joe the Plumber and Bob the Builder

Washington D.C. - A just released national presidential preference poll of Republican voters has surprised politicians and pundits alike. The poll clearly demonstrates that conservative voters are unhappy with mainstream political candidates and are pushing farther to the edge of Right Wing ideology.

Conservative columnist George Will was perplexed. “I don’t get it. There are people on this list who aren’t even people. Have we truly become this desperate?”

FOX News pundit Sean Hannity’s comment on the poll results was succinct. “We’re in deep doo doo.”

The one dissenter among national conservative figures was former Vice President Dick Cheney. “With a few exceptions, I think it’s an admirable list of great Americans. The Republican party would be wrong not to listen to the will of the people.”

Here is the Republican voters’ list of favored candidates for the 2012 presidential election.

Joe the Plumber
Dog the Bounty Hunter
Ted Nuggent
Sarah Palin
Bob the Builder
The Verizon Guy
Betty Crocker
Hannah Montana
Billy Bob Thornton
Matt Drudge
Dick Cheney