The Senility of Eastwood...

Apparently, this old guy, Clint Eastwood (some of you may have heard of him) gave this little speech the other day at the RNC Convention. It was unique because he was talking to, well, an empty chair that allegedly contained the spirit and soul of POTUS Obama. 

Now, when I saw this on the TV the other night, and then saw clips of it later, I thought, "Holy shit! That looked totally incoherent and rambling." Well, other people told me that they thought his speech was "Stunning!", and "Awesome!" and that Clint totally made some great points in his little talk to the chair. 

I had to go back, and look at it again to see where these "great points" were made. Of course, watching it again, and then reading the transcript, he made exactly Z-E-R-O good points, as in, none. Was it a little red meat for the party faithful? Of course it was. I just wish folks would stop extolling the virtues of his speech because to me at least, it exposes them as being really not very bright about public speaking, and or what a good speech is comprised of. I do believe, firmly, that a lot of republicans, and or conservatives loved this speech because it was an Obama bashing speech, and again, that's fine. It was totally devoid of anything resembling coherent topic, but hey, he told Obama to shut up (as he sat invisible in the chair in front of him). 

See, Eastwood had a perfectly good opportunity to come out, and tell the country why he thought the Romney/Ryan ticket was the best. He failed at that, miserably. Instead, he ended up looking like a doddering old fool who couldn't speak his way out of a paper bag.

With that in mind, I'm going to go through his speech, and pick out some points that I think need to be refuted, and or just talked about in all of their ignorant glory.

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, what’s a movie tradesman doing out here? You know they are all left wingers out there, left of Lenin

Yeah, see, this is funny, because you know, the conservative love to think that Hollywood is super and uber liberal, and a lot of time they are pretty close to the truth on this. Sure, there are a lot of liberals in Hollywood, and when said liberals come out, and talk about politics what is the typical response from those on the right? Typically, it's something like, "That stupid commie should just stick to acting and stop talking about politics! They're awful!"

Of course, in this case, when it's Eastwood, they're more than happy to welcome them into their loving arms. And for the record, hey, I'm glad Eastwood is involved in politics. That's cool. I don't care. See the difference there? Thing is, him making cracks about the liberals in Hollywood being like Lenin, well, doesn't he have to work with those people again? Maybe.

There are a lot of conservative people, a lot of moderate people, Republicans, Democrats, in Hollywood. It is just that the conservative people by the nature of the word itself play closer to the vest. They do not go around hot dogging it

Oh, you mean like showing up to give a speech in primetime during the Republican National Convention? Is that not, umm, "hot dogging" it? This, is a great example of conservative cognitive dissonance, or the ability to hold 1 opposing idea in your head, while doing exactly what you're talking about other people doing. Like in this case. Liberals are "hot dogging" it, but, Clint is actually the one doing the alleged "hot dogging".

I saw Jon Voight, a lot of people around.

I am pretty sure you don't want to talk about Voight in regards to conservatives from Hollywood. Dude is a class A kook in terms of being conservative, but then again, that's what a lot of the party faithful love and embrace, but to objective people looking in from the outside, Voight, has lots his marbles.

Everybody is trying, Oprah was crying. 

Now, these guys LOVE to talk about Oprah crying on election night. Thing is, they never stop and wonder WHY she was crying? Maybe it was the whole historical moment that within 50 years of a community going from not being able to legally vote, to holding the highest office in the land? Yeah, that might just have something to do with it. But hey, it's always easier to make fun of Oprah crying, even though she could buy and sell 20 times over, and which is their typical yardstick to measure success by. But since she's a democrat, they scorn her for being, well, happy.

I was even crying. And then finally — and I haven’t cried that hard since I found out that there is 23 million unemployed people in this country.

Above is Clint's first lie. There are not 23 million people unemployed in this country. This isn't even close to the truth. As a matter of fact, there are almost half of the number unemployed as what Clint said in his little speech. There are 12.8 million people unemployed. As according to the BLS. Like Clint's political leaders, he can't help himself but to lie about what is really going on in order to attempt to make the current POTUS look bad.

Now that is something to cry for because that is a disgrace, a national disgrace, and we haven’t done enough, obviously — this administration hasn’t done enough to cure that. Whenever interest they have is not strong enough, and I think possibly now it may be time for somebody else to come along and solve the problem.

How does Mitt and Paul want to solve the problem? Yep, they want to go directly back to the policies and economic policy that got us to this place before. They want to go back to POTUS W Bush's economic dream state where more tax cuts for super rich people will equal more jobs. Well, it has been almost 11 years now since the Bush tax cuts were put into place, and employment is still not great. I think we can say, without a doubt, more tax cuts are not the answer. Also, the want to bring back the de-regulation that almost destroyed the world economy. One thing I know for sure is that if Romney/Ryan are elected, and implement the policies that they want, our unemployment will skyrocket well above 10%.

Well, I know even people in your own party were very disappointed when you didn’t close Gitmo. And I thought, well closing Gitmo — why close that, we spent so much money on it.

We may have spent so much money on it, but do you know why it would have been good to close it? Simply for the fact of appearances. Gitmo, in the greater realm of the world, has become synonymous with American overreach. American arrogance. And American torture. Yeah, I can't imagine why it would have been a good thing to close that Gulag in Cuba.

OK, I thought maybe it was just because somebody had the stupid idea of trying terrorists in downtown New York City.

This has been a talking point for a long time. Why is this a stupid idea? Why not try them in NY, or other American cities instead of in kangaroo military tribunals where the suspects really have no chance to hear the evidence against them, or provide for their own defense. This is still America right? Our justice system is allegedly, the best in the world, but conservatives like Eastwood don't think we should use it. This is another thing conservatives are afraid of. We can't try terrorists in NYC! Imagine the terrorist attacks that would take place! They're dreaming. They're morons. Let's prove our legal system is the best. Try them. Convict them. And then send their asses to Hell while inserting a needle into their arm.

I know you were against the war in Iraq, and that’s okay. But you thought the war in Afghanistan was OK. You know, I mean — you thought that was something worth doing. We didn’t check with the Russians to see how did it — they did there for 10 years

I am pretty sure Clint forgot who took us to those places in the first place. That would be your guy, POTUS Bush. I will agree, I thought Afghanistan was the right choice. I still think it's the right choice. But Clint, old buddy, you missed an almost 8 year span of POTUS Bush's terms.

But we did it, and it is something to be thought about, and I think that, when we get to maybe — I think you’ve mentioned something about having a target date for bringing everybody home. You gave that target date, and I think Mr. Romney asked the only sensible question, you know, he says, “Why are you giving the date out now? Why don’t you just bring them home tomorrow morning?”

There are myriad reasons as to why we can't just bring them home tomorrow. You should probably stick to playing military personnel, because in this case, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. I'd say he isn't bringing them home tomorrow because, the country is still not stable, PLUS, I'm pretty sure the guys running the war, the Generals, Admirals, and other General Officers in the military said, "We can't just pull out." And even if Obama did, you assholes would be up there talking about how he cut and ran from the enemy. Don't even act like you wouldn't. If we had withdrawn from AFG right after Obama was elected, you assholes would be talking about what a wimp Obama was.

See, I never thought it was a good idea for attorneys to the president, anyway.

Phew! This, is awesome. Because, what degree did Romney get at Harvard along with his MBA? Yeah, a LAW DEGREE. You can't possibly be this stupid. Can you?

I think attorneys are so busy — you know they’re always taught to argue everything, and always weight everything — weigh both sides...

It makes me LAUGH that, for some reason, assholes like Clint think that taking your time making decisions, weighing evidence, is a BAD thing? Amazing...

And I think it’s that time. And I think if you just step aside and Mr. Romney can kind of take over. You can maybe still use a plane. Though maybe a smaller one. Not that big gas guzzler you are going around to colleges and talking about student loans and stuff like that.

Here is another oft repeated republican talking point. Obama has the AUDACITY to use AF-1 to, you know, fly around the country and the world. Apparently, he's not supposed to do that because he believes in trying to ecologically sound, and because, let's face it, it's expensive to operate that plane. It's a fucking ridiculous though. The POTUS shouldn't use AF-1. What do they want him to do? Fly commercial? Coach? Fucking morons.

I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important. It is that, you, we — we own this country. We — we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours. 

And here, is where we really get into it. Clint, and the rest of the republican party believe that indeed, they own this country. He's not talking about bi-partisan ownership here. They really believe THEY own this country. And when you're talking to a bunch of old white people that are in the room, well, that story kind of writes itself. And also, doesn't this sort of implode the whole, "I built this!" mantra that was repeated time and time again last week at the RNC? Instead, Clint here is embracing the "WE". We in this case though means republicans and conservatives. There is no space for us liberals.

Now, going through his whole speech, where are the "good points" in it again?

There aren't any. And I will say, in speeches like this, there seldom are, but normally, they're presented a lot better, and not by a cranky old white guy who would get you off of his lawn with a garden hose, or in Eastwood's case, a .44 Magnum (which, by the way, is NOT the most powerful handgun in the world - just another conservative lie).

Full transcript and video of Clint Eastwood's speech.