Showing posts with label General Bethlehem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label General Bethlehem. Show all posts

Monday, June 30, 2008

General Bethlehem in The Times

Paul Villarreal, The Protocol's favorite delusional PUMA general, is at it again, getting his name dropped in the NYT as part of a new generation of freelance dirty tricksters. The Gray Lady soft-pedals his achievements, though, calling them a "harsh series of spots that attack Obama and make some claims that have been widely debunked." He is, in fact, batshit crazy:

My adversaries rightly fear me. They constantly seek to marginalize me and they expend vast amounts of energy trying to get others to ignore me. Because my foes cannot hope to compete with me head-to-head, theirs is a sound strategy and one I have become used to over the years. I imagine Custer, similarly, had a gameplan heading into Little Bighorn. This is how I feel about my opponents' tactics. I don't concern myself much with what they do and instead focus on what I need to execute vis-a-vis my own battle plans.
The labored military metaphors, the sense of destiny and entitlement, the evidence of a somewhat sad life spent dreaming of martial glory . . . you could only make this shit up in one of the worst movies of all time:

GEN. BETHLEHEM
If he wishes to rise above mere thuggery, a military commander must be classically educated. Philosophy, history. Even a sense of the dramatic. (a beat) Do you know what I did before the war? Do you think I was in the army? I sold copying machines. I was a salesman. The talent to lead men and devise and execute a battle plan were locked away inside me. If Nathan Holn hadn't come along, I'd still be selling copying machines. Can you imagine the wasted life? Can you imagine the magnitude of it? But war... War gives men like me a chance.
What's stranger, this clown making the Times or dozens of studio executives watching The Postman and saying, yeah, that's pretty good, audiences will love it? Only The Protocol knows.

The October Protocol hands out hope like candy from its pockets.

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Tuesday, June 3, 2008

What she gonna do?

Clinton, tonight, that is. Her camp's been sending out mixed signals all day, and the campaigns's message discipline has faltered as of late. (Which makes perfect sense. When the campaign ends, Ed Rendell will still be governor of Pennsylvania and Terry McAuliffe will still be Terry McAuliffe. Harold Ickes and Howard Wolfson are losing prime shots at sick White House status points. It's not hard to guess why they're sending the signals they are.)

Under The Protocol, she's got a couple of options.

1) She concedes and endorses. Most likely to happen if his supposed cache of superdelegates collectively informs her campaign this afternoon or evening. Against the advice of the most loyal, she congratulates Obama and ends the campaign. This last detail is important--she has the Nixonesque need to believe she's making the decision alone, in the best interests of something larger, and against the advice of those who are helplessly loyal.

2) More realistically, she "acknowledges" his lead in the pledged delegate race, but holds up the fallacious parallel of her (disputed) lead in that non-metrical metric, the popular vote. "He's leading in one metric, I am in the other." This will allow her to justify suspending, instead of ending, her campaign, and her non-endorsement of Obama. Sadly, this will mean that she needs an excuse to keep going--fundraising and paying off debt and all that--so she'll probably trot out her appeal of the MI/FL decision to the Credentials Committee and suggest that she's waiting for superdelegates to stab Obama by switching to her at the last minute. (Which, of course, they are technically free to do.)

3) She ignores Obama's passing the threshold, delcares Paul "General Bethlehem" Villarreal (my nickname, not his) her new campaign manager, and declares Stage III of the campaign: All Out War. On to Denver! You'll pry this nomination from my cold dead hands! Did you know Obama is a muslim crackhead who got head from a male hooker in the back of a limousine?

Throwing the coins in accordance with Protocol guidance reveals Option 2 as most likely. It's tough to give up the dream. She'll use any argument she has, no matter how tenuous. It seems obvious to most observers that, should she continue, her chances of wresting the nomination from Obama are tiny while those of torpedoing the party are huge. But ambition and isolation work strange effects on highly public figures whose power plays work out across vast canvasses. To succeed at the level Clinton has succeeded at requires a kind of doublethink, a comfort with cognitive dissonance: you've got to convince yourself first, even if all external indications point against you. I will be the nominee.

Before Clinton concedes to Obama, she'll have to concede to herself.

Fuck the I Ching. The cosmic forces abide by The October Protocol.

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