With the help of my wife, Jane, I wrote this song parody almost four years ago, and I find that it still applies today. This time the Republicans are trotting out a different cast of characters, some of whom haven’t made their presidential aspirations official for legal and technical reasons (such as they don’t really intend to run for president, like Donald Trump), to beg and plead the Koch Brothers to give them money so they can attack Hillary Clinton, who recently announced that she will accept the nomination of the Democratic Party to complete either Bill Clinton’s or Barack Obama’s third term. Or maybe she’s going to finally finish the work of the president she did once work for, Richard Nixon. This time around, Sheldon Adelson (Billionaire – Israel) will play a major role in the elections, but don’t think for a moment that just because he’s not one of the Koch Brothers that he must be good. He isn’t. He has pretty much made it clear he wants a President of the United States who will put the interests of a foreign nation (in this case, Israel) ahead of the interests of the United States and its citizens, especially those who do not agree with Israel’s policies and human rights abuses. Why he thinks Marco Rubio is that person is beyond me.
For those who don’t seem to “get it,” let me try to explain why this is bad. The disastrous, and totally insane Citizens United decision made it perfectly legal to form a dummy corporation, fund it with completely anonymous funds, from anywhere around the world, and use it to run ads saying totally false things about someone or something. And there won’t be any repercussions (if any) until after the election. This is not about Free Speech because Money is NOT Speech (no matter what the SCOTUS says.) Money is access to a platform to deliver your speech, regardless of its content. And access to those platforms can most certainly be regulated. Secondly, Corporations, especially For-Profit Corporations, are not People, nor are they Persons. They are artificial entities created on paper for the purpose of acting as a person in certain legal proceedings. If they are Corporations created for the purpose of conducting Commerce, then they most certainly can be regulated by the Congress if their business crosses state lines.
And so far, this year’s crop of anti-gay kooks is not turning up anybody more qualified than former Walmart attorney, Hillary Clinton. Still, it will be fun to watch them run away from their well-documented statements in the past, as well as the reporters asking about them. Please enjoy an encore presentation of “See Our Best.”
See Our Best
Original words and music “Be Our Guest” by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken
Additional lyrics by Wayne A. Schneider, 2011
REINCE PRIEBUS (SPOKEN):
Ladies and gentlemen, it is with deepest pride and greatest pleasure that we welcome you tonight. And now we invite you to relax, let us pull up a chair as the GOP proudly presents…
Your winner!
REINCE PRIEBUS:
See our best! See our best!
Put our viewpoints to the test.
Tie a mike around our neck, and see
That we are not in jest.
Kooks for sure, anti-gay,
Anti-anything you say
Try the hate stuff, it’s malicious,
So deceiving and so vicious
We’re right wing in our stance
After all, this isn’t France!
And a winner here is never second-guessed
Go on, behold our venue
Crap your pants and then you’ll
See our best!
Gee, our best?
See our best!
REINCE PRIEBUS & CANDIDATES:
Big snafu, what we say
Goes unhidden on display
REINCE PRIEBUS:
You’ll despair our nerve to dare
What luminaries have to say
We alone can be paired
With the news that’s kept you scared
No one’s booming or just gaining
While the tax rates have been reigning
We tell folks we get kicks
From our business bag of tricks
GERMANS:
Und they march in perfect step
That you can bet
REINCE PRIEBUS & CANDIDATES:
Come on, our grasping class
Just wants its own free pass
To be our best
REINCE PRIEBUS:
If we’re pressed,
It’s fine whining we express
REINCE PRIEBUS & CANDIDATES:
See our best!
See our best!
See our best!
REINCE PRIEBUS:
Lies are not perturbing to a person so disturbing
There’s a hole within his soul to call upon
Ah, those “good old days” when we were truthful
Happily those good old days are gone
For years we’ve been trying
Seeding so much doubt with lying
Needing expert thieves to help us write our bills
Most days we don’t bother with the hassle
Crabby, batshit crazy
You looked in and oops-a-daisy!
MRS. PELOSI:
It’s their best, it’s their best
Sakes of Christ, they think they’re blessed
I’m so bored but thank the Lord
They’re with their flag pins neatly dressed
With debate, you can see
That they’re blind as blind can be
While we Dems do our boo-hooin’
There’ll be trouble in what they’re doing
They’ll do harm, stoke ‘em hot
Heaven’s sakes, was that a shot?
Listen up, they want the country in distress
They’re not a lot that’s new
Is it one chump or two?
For it’s their best!
REINCE PRIEBUS & CANDIDATES:
They’re our best!
MRS. PELOSI:
It’s their best!
REINCE PRIEBUS & CANDIDATES:
They’re our best
See our best
See our best
Our right hand is on our breast
For ten years now we made lots of money here
And we’re obsessed
With our zeal, with our sleaze
Yes, indeed, the Kochs we please
While the campaign fight’s still going
We can’t help our ugly showing
Coarse, of course, and no fun
‘Til you shout, “Enough you’ve won!”
Then we’ll bring you up to speed on our success
Our fights we know you’ll eat up
While ourselves we beat up
See our best!
See our best!
See our best!
Please, see our best!
This is our daily open thread. Feel free to praise the song writer.
TheZoo 
Marco Rubio is this election cycle’s Sarah Palin, political prostitute who’ll say and do anything his pimp, Sheldon Adelson wants….He’s a lap dog panting and prancing to get into the political limelight, and he’ll be wanking Adelson’s shriveled cock to get there.
Don’t hold back, fatherbob. Tell us what you really think of Adelson and Rubio. 😆
Perhaps at this point, of the declared candidates Marco is your pick but I think the best of the worst is yet to come. I’m expecting severe warnings of impending doom from the unHoly Trinity of Huckabee, Santorum and Jindel and many moments of cluelessness from Walker and Paul.
George W Bush criticizes Obama on Middle East policy. That’s the joke.
My jaw dropped when I read that.
Imagine criticism from he (and Cheney) who mucked it up!
BabyBoyBush is an airhead!
Big money, corporate personhood, and voter suppression are the three most deadly viruses currently infecting what once was the bastion of “We the people, the USA. In years past, we enjoyed a degree of immunity thanks to the Supreme Court, an immunity now overrun by radical right wing appointments and the politic represented thereby.
Apparently the only fix is a Constitutional amendment which puts it into straight and unencumbered language that in effect wraps each of those three viruses in an impermeable straitjacket. I therefore suggest the immediate ratification of the following:
Meanwhile, I suggest Sheldon Adelson move to Israel where he belongs and that the Koch Brothers leave the US and head to Russia where they can retrieve and relive their father’s shady legacy.
Love it, but would like to see a clause that follows the British model and restricts all campaign activity to six week prior to said election, under penalty of disqualification from office for life.
Absolutely. Will add that before I submit the final draft to the several states for ratification. 😉
Great idea, frugal. It should further stipulate that this amendment is about elections, not anything else. The ban on campaigning prior to x-number of days before an election may be problematic, as it may prevent even like-minded supporters of a candidate from holding their own rally in support of said candidate despite their 1st Amendment Freedom of Assembly.
However, that does not mean TV and radio ads can’t be banned before a certain date, or restricted in number and duration. You want to be careful how speech in general can be affected by such a restriction.
I do think it’s imperative that it be made clear that money is not speech. (I can;t imagine how they came up with that stretch.) Money is money, and speech is speech. Money is not equivalent to speech. Money only gets you access to a platform to deliver your speech. And access to platforms to deliver speech can and should be restricted by Congress.
Points well made, Wayne. The money is what should be restricted, not the speech.
Perhaps the SCROTUS should now look back and re-evaluate the premise made in Citizens United that unlimited speechmoney would have no real impact on elections
If money = vote, then the Koch Bros have approximately 80 billion more votes than I have. I don’t recall any words anywhere in the Constitution as amended that support that bogus thesis.
I’ll work your thoughts into the final draft, and as I do so I’ll also work to subdue the urge to ban the Republican Party from participating in anything beyond outhouse basement cleaning.
We now have a new Attorney General!
Cruz Channels Goldberg, Says ‘Liberal Fascism’ Targets Christians
“Liberal Fascism” — Is Cruz really that stupid or does he assume that everyone else is that stupid? If there’s a fascist out there anywhere in the USA, one of its loudest spokespersons in Cruz, along with most any other wingnut Teabagger Republican.
Glad I have a copy of “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” on my shelf. I may re-read the first few chapters so I can get a better grip on Teabagger methodology.
“Get the fuck outta my house.”
THAT is a great trick. And he asked Ford what his card was AFTER he decided to cut open the lemon, so it’s not like he had 52 pieces of fruit lying about with cards stuck in them, and he picked the one that corresponded to the card Ford said he was thinking. Nicely done.
The cynic in me (which is pervasive) says Ford was in on it from the start and the card and the fruit were all staged.
Okay, I agree. That would make sense as an explanation.
I admit that when I’m not being an outside observer of myself, I can be swept away by “Hollywood magic”, the way your brain’s ability to fill in a back story it can’t possibly know to be true just so it can make sense of what it is seeing now is exploited to make you think you’ve seen something you were never shown. Even when it’s a fictional story, your brain will make up a premise that makes what you’;re seeing now sensible. At least, “healthy” minds are supposed to do this. Us fucked-up people do it slightly differently. 🙂 Anyway, once we “fill in the gaps,” it’s easy to forget we were never shown how this whole thing was set up. We just assume he’s doing a trick in his home just like it looks. That makes sense.
hmm, is your gravatar a selfie, bdmm?
My birthday last year, feeling stressed, tired and cranky. 🙂
If you believe in magic and/or god, no problemo. 😀
Or, he may have bumped his head a little hard in his last airplane crash.
Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen, of Brad Blog, have been doing a weekly ‘BradCast’ as well as the ‘Green News Reports’ heard on Progressive Voices on TuneIn. Today the BradCast goes daily, available at Brad Blog, as a download, or broadcast at radioornot.com, Nicole Sandler’s internet-only program. The shows will alternate around Nicole’s live show, which is five days a week, from 10am to noon, edt.
Or, the link itself:
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/videos/hear-pete-townshends-orchestral-remake-of-the-whos-love-reign-oer-me-20150427
Thanks. I love this. I need to get back home to cool, cool rain.
http://cams.allaboutbirds.org/channel/42/Barn_Owls/
Barn Owls in Texas have a clutch of six eggs,. I didn’t read into it so I don’t know when they’re scheduled to hatch.
Click on the feed and watch for yourselves. 🙂
It’s wonderful to have so many live avian cams!
Even the California Condors life is known to the world through video!
Thank you for the link, Wayne!
This is wrong on so many levels, it boggles the mind.
If it were up to me, I’d make sure the five wingnut justices stayed home, and not just for this decision but for alladem.
What puzzles me more than anything about the religious right is their apparent assumption that marriage = sex and nothing else. They seem preoccupied with it for some odd reason, and use it as the basis for their unlimited hate and fear. All this in worship of a god who snuck down to earth one night a couple thousand years ago and porked a virgin because apparently it was more fun to make people that way than simply taking someone’s rib and using it to create . . . well, you know.
Meanwhile and speaking of deranged nutcases, Wiley Drake, a pastor who has prayed for President Obama’s death, points out that Amurkkka’s a Christian nation and the proof of that is because “Our nation has a birth certificate. The president doesn’t, but our nation does.” Right. Where do we keep it? Is a copy available on the web perchance? One thing’s for certain — Amurkkka wasn’t born in Hawaii cuz their birth certs are clearly bogus.
I have renounced my faith in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
I now worship Jibbers Crabst.
Didn’t I see this movie about 1979? The phrase ‘can you dig it’ rings a bell.