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Julia, a tragedy in twelve acts

I confess — I feel more than a twinge of sympathy for the stupid drone (or, more likely, committee of drones) who came up with this Julia thing. I’ve done a thousand crappy educational slideshows just like it. Everything looks fine in bullet point form on the memo, and nobody spots the flaws, unintended messages and double entendres until it goes live and singes everyone’s eyebrows off.

The brief: show how Obama’s policies benefit women throughout their lives (do please stress the woman thing; they’re pushing that at the moment). Hey, I know, let’s take one woman — we’ll call her Julia — and look at a dozen points in her life when our policies could help her out. Easy peasy, light and breezy.

But once you string the whole thing together, it becomes the sad story of a woman with no face, no friends, no family. No lover, no husband, a son begat of turkey baster (who gets on a bus one day and is never seen again). She’s a gormless thing who needs a government handout at every turn. It takes her seven years to get a degree and then she takes a low-paying job that doesn’t require one. And when she’s old and her codin’ days are done, she hoes beans for free in a communal veg plot. Alone.

Oh, and apparently Obama is president for seventy years.

The problem with most of the programs in the slideshow is that they’re either small amounts, narrowly targeted beneficiaries or both. With the exception of education and Social Security — and nobody believes Obama or anybody else has got those licked — Julia gets a small amount of free stuff almost nobody gives a shit about. There’s absolutely fuck-all to be passionate about here.

F’rexample, the only people who care about the cost of birth control pills are women of childbearing age who want them. And women of childbearing age who want to be on the pill are the exact people who know that the pill isn’t very expensive or hard to get. Because, you know, they’re buying them now.

To the barricades, Comrades! The Romney/Ryan budget could cut programs like the Small Business Administration by 20%!

Oh, that poor Flashmonkey. Good weekend, all!

Comments


Comment from Argentium G. Tiger
Time: May 4, 2012, 10:24 pm

> Oh, and apparently Obama is president for seventy years.

I’m sure President Narcissistic regularly has dreams such as that.

Could be his next book title: “Dreams of my Dictatorship.”


Comment from Gromulin
Time: May 4, 2012, 10:51 pm

Shouldn’t we at least try to act outraged over this stuff? It would fool them into thinking they were really hittin home with this crap. We can mock them later…let’s give them the full Brer Rabbit in the mean time. “..please, oh please, don’t throw me into them brambles!!”


Comment from Nina
Time: May 4, 2012, 11:22 pm

Yeah, it wasn’t very well thought out. They’re having a dickens of a time coming up with a meme that the right hasn’t picked up and tossed back in their face covered in layers of FAIL.

I can live with that.


Comment from Monotone The Elderish
Time: May 4, 2012, 11:33 pm

Heh, I was waiting for you to jump on this. Seems The closer it gets to election day the more bat-shit stuff comes outta their mouths. I enjoy watching them freak out when they realize how stupid they sound. 🙂


Comment from Clifford Skridlow
Time: May 4, 2012, 11:45 pm

(who gets on a bus one day and is never seen again).

In the words of the late Frank Zappa: ” Don’t make a fuss, get on the bus”. Perhaps young Zach wound up in the back of Fido 3 . . . Fail is simply too small a word for this.


Comment from Argentium G. Tiger
Time: May 5, 2012, 12:56 am

Wow, I’m seeing the Julia blastback get seriously harsh on some sites. (The Looking Spoon, for instance…) O_o


Comment from BJ
Time: May 5, 2012, 1:18 am

I agree Stoaty, this is the work of a committee of drones, apparently very young ones at that.

Thus far the campaign has been a clusterfuck of fail.

Breitbart would love it.


Comment from Oceania
Time: May 5, 2012, 1:56 am

A gaggle of Lesbians?

Geez – where’s Sir Les Patterson when you need him?


Comment from Ric Locke
Time: May 5, 2012, 1:57 am

The remarkable thing about the Julia deal is that it constitutes a repudiation of feminism.

The whole point of feminism is that women are as capable of doing for themselves as men are. The “patriarchy” argument is that men have actively conspired to keep women dependent, and it’s fairly clear from much feminist argument that the big problem with that is that they don’t care for the quid pro quo. They don’t want to be dependent upon men, because they don’t like what men want in return for supporting them.

But “Julia” is utterly dependent, so much so as to be at the level of a toddler. She has nothing that isn’t given to her, and she makes no move to shift for herself, waiting patiently for the next gift. Not very feminist, to my mind. It’s just that she isn’t dependent on men, she’s dependent on the Government.

And the whole thing ultimately rests on the notion that there is no quid pro quo — that the Government does not (and will not in the future) demand something from her in return for the support she gets. Anybody who thinks that is credible deserves to be treated like a four-year-old.


Comment from orabidoo
Time: May 5, 2012, 2:44 am

Ever the contrarian investor, I am going to say “mustelids, ladies, gentlemen and yes, you, …. Oceania” let’s not be so quick in disparaging the Flashmonkey who rigged up the Julia Powerpoint dealio. The Flashmonkey is liable to get the last chortle.

The entrepreneurial self reliant spirit takes at least a generation to cultivate and a few summers to kill.
It is the same as with the cucumber. It is easy to turn it into a slimey socialist pickle. To reverse it is almost unheard of. Some of you are going to pipe in with “but look at what happened behind the Iron Curtain, where the free market and private business erupted after the commies were temporarily taken away from the limelight”.
Yes, it is all true, I have been there seen that.
But this is America. And there is not anyone within Milky Way who is going to bail us out. To be a beacon to us.

Long story short, this once grand nation turned to a kibbutz of Julias. It is incredibly hard (and I am being diplomatic) to count on the reversal. I do not particularly care due to childlessness and preposterously low fixed costs and justifiably well equipped defensive perimeter in remote mountainous area replete with wildlife. But it sure was one heck of a Republic we had here.

“Delenda est Carthago” and “Obanga Must Be Stopped”.
2 sides of the same denarius.

I wonder, Dame Stoat, how many of these coins you have inadvertently discovered during your afternoon dustbath/nap sessions.


Comment from Skandia Recluse
Time: May 5, 2012, 4:12 am

I believe that those on the republican side of this issue are completely missing the point. This campaign by Obama is not intended to persuade anyone. Rather it is intended to tighten the noose around the neck of those women who are already dependent on ‘services’ provided by democrat ideology when it controls government. I know several women who love Obama and what he has done for them; they say that they could not have made it without government assistance. They say their life would be much worse without that assistance, and they say ‘you republicans are trying to take it all away from us’.

The more you mock this campaign, the more firmly held their belief that without the democrats they would have nothing, and the more they are convinced that republicans really are waging war on women.

Republicans are missing the target here.


Comment from Oceania
Time: May 5, 2012, 6:18 am

I’ve just found a film in a Dusty Archive in the Bowels of a national Archive this evening of the movie ‘Barry McKenzie Holds His Own’ starring the Young Dame Edna Everage.
Needless to say, the coal fire is on, the room is seated, dimmed and nibbles have been provided, and Guests await this evenings entertainment.
DFC, DSO, VC and Bar open past Midnight!


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: May 5, 2012, 12:29 pm

I suspect those women are utterly lost to us anyway, Scandia.

I forgot who said it first, but the Julia flap is one of the ways he’s starting to lose the hipsters. How many people voted for this guy because he’s cool? And if he proves himself not just uncool, but lulz-worthy?


Comment from JeffS
Time: May 5, 2012, 1:37 pm

Republicans are missing the target here.

Sometimes the target isn’t worth the ammunition. Sweasel has the right of it; those deep into the Koolaid will embrace this presentation as gospel. They will not be swayed from their “Savior”. Better to go for the undecided.


Comment from Ric Locke
Time: May 5, 2012, 2:34 pm

Skandia, Weasel, JeffS — and if it turns out to be a significant force, it will be ammunition for those future students of society and Government who will argue that Suffrage was a fatally bad idea, let alone “Women’s Lib” or “Feminism”.

It will basically mean that the real, highly valuable contributions of the women who are contributors are utterly swamped by the negative effects of the unthinking, jock-(or “bad boy”)-worshiping dependency-seekers.


Comment from Stephen Falken
Time: May 5, 2012, 6:04 pm

Julia’s Circle of Life
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2012/05/julias-circle-of-life.html


Comment from fudimo
Time: May 5, 2012, 7:59 pm

Just a thought.
http://www.grouchyconservativepundits.org/index.php?topic=44897.msg348345#msg348345


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: May 5, 2012, 9:07 pm

Your benefits are over there, by the trench.


Comment from Allen
Time: May 6, 2012, 6:27 am

Good grief, that’s really depressing. Julia spends four years doing web design while in college, and spends years paying off the loans. Then Julia is a drone for a number of years. Finally, Julia gets a SBA loan, and ta da! She ends up living off Social Security.

Jeebus take the red pill and be done with it. Or, the blue one, who the hell knows what these slags want anymore.


Comment from Oceania
Time: May 6, 2012, 8:19 am

I didn’t realise that they were American women ….


Comment from Sgt. York
Time: May 6, 2012, 8:53 pm

>>Sometimes the target isn’t worth the ammunition.

As an Affluent American I refuse to admit such targets do exist.

I do admit there are Targets That We Cannot Register.

These are Rare.


Comment from Bob Mulroy
Time: May 6, 2012, 9:25 pm

Maybe we could do the life of Sid -the middle aged machinist who never works again because of Obama’s policies?


Comment from orabidoo
Time: May 6, 2012, 11:52 pm

This Swedish Lass seems to understand.

I am 1,500 6.5×55 rounds behind her.
This is a wonderful landscape. Very sparsely populated. I can see a tractor trailer almost every other week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70QbaQmQkWQ

Morning has broken, like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning
Praise for the springing fresh from the word

Sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from heaven
Like the first dewfall, on the first grass
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden
Sprung in completeness where his feet pass

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning
Born of the one light, Eden saw play
Praise with elation, praise every morning
God’s recreation of the new day


Comment from Oceania
Time: May 7, 2012, 1:17 am

I see that you are killing your own now – on Skype!

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/6871039/Wife-watches-soldier-husbands-death-on-Skype


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: May 7, 2012, 11:19 am

Welcome home, Bob. What did you bring us?


Comment from Bob Mulroy
Time: May 7, 2012, 7:54 pm

Some jade thingies, silk, antibiotics, four bottles of the rocket fuel they kept serving us, some tea that was more expensive than pot, ceramics, and thousands of photos.

I’m not sure why the tea was so expensive. I can’t tell any difference between it and the stuff from our local grocery. Then again, I’m just not one of *those* people.


Comment from Pablo
Time: May 7, 2012, 8:04 pm

Republicans are missing the target here.

Perhaps not, or perhaps intentionally so. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6aLpf5OMKw

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