Sunday, January 31, 2010

Things I can't unlearn.

I was blissfully ignorant of the whole John Edwards scandal. I mean, I knew he was a wealthy trial lawyer-cum-politician who had problems controlling the contents of his trousers, but that hardly made him unique. Who he was rogering and how he was rogering them never really crossed the threshold of my notice, because it was his politics that appalled me, not his lack of manners or mores in relationships.

How bad could that be? Well, no thanks to Breda, I find that it's pretty bad. How this slimeball made it from the back cover of the local phonebook to a candidate for national office is utterly beyond me. Forget nuclear launch codes; I wouldn't trust this weasel with a burn-out match.

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

I learned something of his background during his presidential campaign efforts, and of course learned of his political views.

Thus my reaction as all this scandal broke: "I'm not at all surprised." Sleazoids do that sort of stuff. It's built in. Like scorpions, yellow jackets and water moccasins.

Art

Steve said...

I wonder what the press knows about Obama that we won't find out until he's out of office?

Firehand said...

Same way Obama made his rise: the 'progressives' loved him because he said all the right 'rob the people who work' words, and lots of media weenies who swooned over him, ignored or made excuses for his actions, and covered up for him whenever possible.

Stephen said...

Oh come one! Not qualified? Didn't you see his haircut?

alath said...

What the American people demand above all else from their politicians is lying. Not just ordinary lying, but very smooth, expert, calculated, deeply sincere lying. By someone with the capacity to make up a lie one second, and believe it whole-heartedly one second later.

"We can increase spending, cut taxes, and balance the budget."

"My new random mandatory rectal probe legislation will ensure everyone's safety from terrorists."

"I swear to uphold the Constitution."

Yeah. So basically, number one on the list of job qualifications for an elected official in America is that you have to be a psychopath.

og said...

I will always maintain that we could write social security numbers on ping pong balls, fill a swimmpng pool full of the balls, and fling in a lemur, and the ping pong ball the lemur picked would represent a better president than the current electoral process could ever provide.So much the better if the ping pong balls that represent current politicians were flattened with a hammer first.

WV: Niumpers. A special strain of lemurs bred to pick pingpong balls out of swimming pools.

Jay G said...

We'd have to shoot the lemur before he picked a ball to make it better...

og said...

But just with a paintball. Poor lemur never did nothing to us.

rickn8or said...

And Elizabeth's response tho the paternity question? "Oh, yes. We're so HAPPY to find out that John's mistress wasn't screwing around on us."

In the case of most married women I know, certain parts of John's anatomy would have been nailed up over the fireplace. Surveys as to whether or not they were still attached to John runs about 65-35 yes-no.

And I STILL hope he ends his days as a mall lawyer doing powers-of-attorney.

JohnW said...

I'm with Steve on this. If this was all common knowledge among the press corps what ELSE are they covering up right NOW?

jimbob86 said...

How'd he get elected, you ask? I remember seeing him on TV early on and hearing Mark Knopfler in my head singing, "Yeah, Buddy, That's his own Hair....." ......

wv- bolow As in "Morals bolow ground level in Death Valley....

breda said...

You're welcome!

breda said...

(I also added another link, if you can stand it.)

Anonymous said...

Boy, we sure dodged one Hell of a bullet by avoiding that snowbilly from Alaska, huh?

Anonymous said...

"lawyer-cum-politician"

Heh.

Next on the career ladder: televangelist.

Al Terego

Anonymous said...

How on earth could Trump's handlers have missed the opportunity to have Johnny on their new season of the Apprentice with Blagojevich?

Imagine the great hair stories as all the greats of haute-coiffure gathered in one room..."the john, the rod, and the don".

Might be a great stand-alone NBC spinoff series, too.

Anonymous said...

Note that the media is kicking the dead body now and not during the election.

If Edwards were a Republican, his charred remains would have been dust by now.

Shootin' Buddy

Moriarty said...

The guy needs professional help. There's a big-ass screw loose in that guy's head, and unless he gets professional help, it's going to stay loose...

Got news. Loose screws like that correspond to "personality disorder" and they don't respond very well to therapy.

Charming sociopaths are more common than most people realize and elected offices seem to attract them. The press covering it up or justifying it is just part of the game, now.

Yah, it's scary that his hand got that close to the throttle, but there are others as bad or worse than him who got a lot farther along. Modern politics is just sociopathy writ large, with a few minor exceptions.

I'd just as soon not know.

Old NFO said...

Gives a whole new meaning to the term 'poster boy' doesn't it...

CJM said...

Don't forget the way Edwards made all that money he used to get elected, he won the first big case against the tobacco companies. So to give him his due (about 300 million worth from RJR etc) he must be a pretty good lawyer. Of course that probably is just another mark against him as far as being any kind of decent human being.

rickn8or said...

CJM--
OB/GYN's aren't too thrilled with him, either.

And yes, it WAS damn close there. You know for a while, it looked like we were gonna have a MORMON in the White House?

Ed Foster said...

Og and Shootin' Buddy. What they said.
As an addendum, after you got me interested in the case, I read last night about Mrs. Edwards, who's cancer was nowhere near fatal, but was being milked for all it was worth.
A foulmouthed, abusive, bullying bitch, self obsessed to the point of disfunction. They deserved each other.
If some whackjob had capped President Kerry, the comedy in D.C. might have been as bad as.....
Well, as bad as it is now.

Bram said...

His poor dying wife sure is taking her time. Poor millionaire lady (who knowingly married the scum of the Earth).

markm said...

Presidents I'm pretty sure were sociopaths:
Clinton
Nixon
Johnson
Kennedy

I think Carter has a different mental disorder - the inability to distinguish his ideal world from reality. It's common and rather charming in preachers, but as bad as psycopathy when decisions matter.

But the remarkable thing about our constitutional republic is that even the President's power is contained and limited, so one fiend or nut can't do that much damage... Except when those that are supposed to contain it are finding ways to turn limited powers into unlimited and undivide the divided powers.

And yes, I think that picking politicians by lottery couldn't produce worse results than voting for those that desperately wanted the jobs does.