Monday Reads: It’s all about the Meme, ’bout that Meme, ’bout that Meme, no troubleS

Hello Monday!

Presidential Wannabes are lining up in the nation’s backwaters states that host the earliest primaries to tout their wares.  Well, all of them except the Jebster who is fundraising on the West Coast.  He’s coming off a very bad, terrible week where he proves yet again, that the Bush Boyz had wasted yet stellar educations.  I’d thought just about every one learned the lessons of the foreign policy wreck that was the Iraq invasion and occupation.  I guess if you really have no skin in the game and your investments are all lined up in defense industries, you can afford to ignore lessons that cost the rest of us lives, naivety and money.

So, let me start out with Hillary and then go the GOP clown car.  There’s a big feature on Clinton in USN&R today that’s worth a look. It characterizes Hillary as a “trail blazer” who is trying to establish her identity outside of her husband.  Silly me!  I thought she did that when she became a U.S. Senator and successful Secretary of State.

Hillary Clinton is taking some important steps to establish her own identity as she stakes out positions that are separate and distinct from her two celebrity predecessors, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

It’s part of her strategy to set the framework of the 2016 general election very early and in ways that enhance her electability. “She can shape the general election message from Day One,” says political scientist Bill Galston, a former White House adviser to President Bill Clinton. “We know who she is, but not what she stands for. She gets to answer that question on her own terms, which is unprecedented in modern presidential politics.” Hillary Clinton is the overwhelming favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination, at this point without serious opposition, and will have many months in which to refine her message. A big part of that will be explaining how Hillary differs from Bill and Barack, as she tries to show she is a leader of the future, not a politician from the past.

The process has already begun. Clinton has distanced herself from her husband’s policies by saying that the crime-fighting agenda endorsed by Bill Clinton two decades ago, such as mandatory minimum sentences and other tough anti-crime policies, resulted in too much incarceration of African-American men. She says these policies have not done much to reduce serious crime but have kept young black men away from their families for long periods of time, damaged their ability to be productive citizens, and harmed the social structure of many African-American communities.

I’m really not sure why the media seems to think she’s never been her own person and only reflects the accomplishments and views of her old boss and her husband. This strikes me as supremely patronizing and a level of assholiness that I can’t really comprehend.

Headlines today show my assholy, hot mess Governor Jindal putting together a presidential committee and praying to his angry sky god for guidance.  Like he hasn’t been running for the Republican nomination for at least the last three years.  The dude should resign the governorship. He hasn’t been the least bit interested in the state, its people, or even being here for at least that long.  Tiger Beat on the Potomac has a few money quotes.

Jindal has also suffered from low approval ratings at home — sitting in the high 20s-low 30s — and Louisiana Republicans have criticized him for the state’s budget deficit. In February, Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s — two of the top three U.S. credit rating agencies — downgraded the state’s outlook from “stable” to “negative,” citing Louisiana’s $1.6 billion shortfall and declining oil prices. The budget gap has increased pressure on the governor to raise taxes, which would be a nonstarter with anti-tax advocates such as Grover Norquist and a liability in a Republican primary. Jindal has blamed much of the budget issues on the drop in oil prices.

He has so far been overshadowed in a large and growing Republican presidential field, registering at one percent in the latest polls among national Republicans and those in Iowa and New Hampshire. Early-state activists say he will likely have trouble breaking through in a field that features many social conservative favorites — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; the past two Iowa caucus winners, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee; tea party icon Texas Sen. Ted Cruz; former Texas. Gov Rick Perry and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, among others.

The Jebster has written off Iowa altogether or not.  It rather depends on who you’re listening to from his campaign.

Between his low standing in state polls, the socially conservative bent of the Iowa GOP base and his decision to skip the state’s straw poll in August, Bush has lots of incentives to give up on Iowa next year. Republicans here know it, which is why the former Florida governor spent his weekend reassuring them he hasn’t already written off the state as a lost cause.

“I’m going to be here. I’m here right now!” Bush told reporters Saturday after appearing at a fundraiser in Iowa City for Sen. Chuck Grassley. “Why would I be here if I wasn’t going to compete in Iowa?”

From Dubuque to Iowa City to the state GOP’s Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines on Saturday night, Bush threw everything he had into the effort to convince Iowans that he doesn’t plan to blow off the state. His intensely private wife, Columba, and his son Jeb Jr., both accompanied him to Dubuque, where he held an hourlong town hall. He took 11 questions from the crowd there, and then a few dozen “selfies” with attendees before leaving. He met privately with several top donors, county chairs and elected officials — some of whom have been alarmed by Bush’s laissez-faire approach thus far to Iowa — prior to his speech at the Republican Party dinner; when it was over, he greeted a long receiving line of supporters in his hospitality suite

Pearl Clutcher Lady Lindsey has announced he’s running because “the world is falling apart”. Quick!  Some one get an interior designer!  This is a radically new situation and we need a make over!

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Monday that he will announce his decision about whether to run for president on June 1 in his hometown of Central, South Carolina, but left little doubt about his intentions by saying “I’m running.”

“I’m running because of what you see on television; I’m running because I think the world is falling apart; I’ve been more right than wrong on foreign policy,” he said on “CBS This Morning,” when asked if he was running because he was unimpressed with the rest of the field (and appearing to dispense with the pretense that he hasn’t decided whether to jump in). “It’s not the fault of others, or their lack of this or that that makes me want to run; it’s my ability in my own mind to be a good commander in chief and to make Washington work.”

So, back to Jebster and the good ol’ days of Lord & Master marriages. 

What a clusterfuck the Republican party has become.

What’s on your blogging and reading list today?