Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for February 11, 2024

Kicking and biting really works best when it’s done in person. TV ads have a similar enough effect (they hope) to allow candidates to work on millions of people at the same time.

What Lucy doesn’t understand is that while human candidates may act like animals, they need to pretend they’re civilized.

But … isn’t that what elections are all about, anyway?? Of course she’s assuming that the human electorate is a herd .. ? Oh, all right. Point taken …

In the future, when the question is raised “when did Lucy cease to be a rational force upon Danae and, however unintentionally, become a bad influence”, send them here.

Nominees for president will be selected by their knockout records.

I would be glued to the TV watching an election run like Lucy described.

Not so good when the elected ones turn to kicking and biting the electorate.

I have to feel sorry for the tv every election cycle now. Campaign ads are hard for me to stomach.

This is the single biggest reason why I use a VPN service and have it set to Europe. I don’t have paid TV service, so most of my video viewing is internet based and ad supported. A VPN set to Europe tells the streaming service to show ads from that country, so I never see campaign ads. I also no longer see those obnoxious ads for scammy products and prepper crap. The downside is when I see an ad for something that looks good, like a brand of Swiss chocolate, it’s kind of hard for me to buy.

John Dean was Nixon’s White House counsel during the Watergate scandal. A bedrock old-school conservative himself, he was a big fan of Barry Goldwater’s 1960 book Conscience of a Conservative, so much so that he entitled his own regretful 2006 book Conservatives without Conscience.

In it, he describes the findings of psychologists about “authoritarian personalities”. They think (or rather feel), as did Machiavelli, that what any polity needs is a strong, decisive leader who will make all the decisions for everybody, sparing them the onerous task of having to think for themselves.

Estimates are that about ⅓ of the American populace fits this description, longing for a powerful, dominating father figure to steer the national “family”. Of those, about 99% are sheep desperately seeking a border collie to lead them, and the other 1% are narcissistic psychopaths convinced that it’s their own (sometimes divinely ordained) destiny to do so.

“The trouble with democracy is that they let folks vote for the guy I don’t like.” – Archie Bunker

Happy Superb Owl day everybody!

Anybody else remember reading the “Bizarro World” Superman comics back in the 1960s?

Bizarro World was an alternative, duplicate version of Earth, but everything & every person was reversed. Superman was evil and evil was good, and everything that was “good” was bad.

Did not realize as a child that I was reading prophecy :(

You can’t be serious

we have a choice of 2 dementia and deranged

They are both too old.

Agree on the age thing. However when Buttercup advised Putin to attack NATO countries, he abandoned reasonability – always his worst trait – and touted potential world war. That would disqualify him if he were 30 years younger.

Advertising hypes a candidate in the same way it does detergents, skin creams, and cars. It’s the old ad maxim, Sell the sizzle, not the steak. However in the case of Buttercup, the steak is rotten and the smell is worse.

Every Republican candidate is running on “securing the border.” That’s interesting because their supreme leader just bragged about how he killed the bill to do just that.

A few decry the “liberal policies” and show some people smashing windows. No, they are NOT showing them smashing windows at the Capitol but it does bring those images to mind.

Mental competency of the candidates is not a factor. It takes no brains to do exactly everything Trump tells you to do. Besides they may be in the 98% of his followers who he says are dumber than he and can’t pass a basic mental competency test.

That would be Perp45 kicking and biting the hardest and most. Plus he’s leaving huge piles behind him. But it would be an insult to horses to compare him to one.

We just go with the ones who can get the most bulk votes from nursing homes, homeless shelters, and undocumented migrants.

I thought the Yahoos did that, and the Houyhnhnms were more enlightened.

“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t people get rid of the lizards?”

“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”

“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”

“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”

“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”

“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in.”

I would rather have a president that had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the White House, as long as he (or she) was qualified.Then if they did a good job, they would get time off for good behavior.

Biden, with his dukes up…the great orange blob crawls under a table and wets himself.

Time for an election party – let’s serve baloney sandwiches (misspelling deliberate).

My father once suggested there shouldn’t be television advertising for elections, as candidates would have to talk to would be voters. A nice wish. Though that would actually be civilized.

If you are worried about age, the sad truth is that we have deterred and destroyed so many potential and practicing politicians that we don’t have a lot to choose from. We spend more time looking for and talking about scandals, potential scandals, foohpahs, personal weaknesses, family weaknesses than we do looking for and talking about what the people actually say and do, what experience they actually have, etc. I wonder how many potentially great leaders we lose because they just don’t want to deal with the probing and defamation.

And now, we have one major party in which the leaders are afraid to say ‘boo’ without approval [why am I continually reminded of the Hans Christian Anderson tale, "The Emperors New Clothes?] and another major party where leaders are from different internal factions and have yet to succeed in uniting the party or in making a positive national presence.

Can we just vote for Lucy?

Liar Trump insults everyone, all the time!

It would be more entertaining, but with 2 old geezers it’d be over before the popcorn is finished popping

Huh. Isn’t that the kind of campaign tfg is running? I haven’t heard “him” say one substantive thing about what he’s going to do for the country. . .lotta bragging and threatening and whining. . .Don’t think I’ve ever heard Joe Biden whine. Don’t think I’ve ever seen him swagger. I have seen him ride a bicycle, though. . .and I’m d*mn sick and tired of the ageism. . .he’s experienced and empathetic and has known some great sorrows. Oh, yeah, and that other thing that tfg will NEVER be: Biden is a GOOD man. Also: Biden’s supporters don’t go around threatening bodily harm to those that don’t agree with them.

One has a much nice mane, and doesn’t chew on the fence.

Biden is incapable of running the country. Don’t be a loser, vote for Trump.

“Welcome to another edition of Thunder Dome! Two men enter, one man leaves.”

That’s what the Super Bowl is for.

He doesn’t trip all over himself.

I have seen one horse bite another horse. Near an old mill preserved for a historical display was a horse corral. Only one corner dips down to a stream, and one horse was drinking. The other horse wanted a turn, and bit him on the rump. That’s not very polite, but sometimes you have to be more assertive.

And democracy rides off into the sunset.

We previously got the one who sucker-punched best and I don’t want him back.

There have been a lot fewer ads since the Iowa caucuses have passed.

Airwave abuse abounds.