Oh I'm not finished yet. 2012 offered an embarrassment of riches when it came to batshit-craziness. To wit:
Most Baffling Cultural Phenomenon: Gangnam Style. Not that I follow popular culture all that closely (yes I do), this "Gangnam Style" thing completley blindsided me. Apparently some South Korean rapper (and I can't quite wrap my head around THAT concept) named Psy came out with this song and accompanying spazzy dance moves which has swept the nation and the world too. I just read where the YouTube video of this has just passed one billion views. That by itself is astonishing and worthy of some kind of recognition, but everything boils down to the question of "Why this?" and not something else? The music is not that remarkable, and the pretend-pony-riding dance step doesn't seem all that inspired, either. In fact, "Gangnam Style" makes the Macarena look like the Bolshoi Ballet. So I'm left scratching my head wondering what the hell is going on. I'm sure this Psy person has had a field day being the center of the world's attention for more than his alloted 15 minutes, but now he's facing the unenviable, Herculean task of coming up with something new and better to surpass this big splash he just made (not likely), or getting thrown on the next bus to oblivion and never being heard from again. We will see if anyone remembers what Gangnam Style is in a month or two.
Most Hysterical Meltdown of 2012: Has to be Karl Rove's total schizophrenic breakdown on Faux News' election night coverage. Things started going south early on for the Mittster, as state after state went into the Obama column. But when the race in Ohio was called and thus the election, Karl Rove crapped his Depends undergarments right on camera and had some sort of grand-mal seizure that made him get all flustered and bug-eyed like a walrus getting a prostate exam. He looked like he was going to pop a sphincter blathering about two or three Republican votes not being counted in some hinterland Ohio county, even though several HUNDRED THOUSAND votes in heavily Democratic Cuyahoga county were still outstanding. But the piece de resistance was when some siliconed Fox newsskank toddled off backstage on her stripper heels and confronted the numbers geeks at the "decision desk" where the Ohio call was made. The math nerds were NOT HAVING any of this "Are you reeeeally sure?" whining, and bitch-slapped that newstrollop (and Karl Rove, by proxy) back to whatever passes for reality on Fox. In the end, Obama won, Karl Rove got banished (for a while) from spewing lies on Faux News, and I had a big ol' glass of chocolate wine. Now THAT was a good night!
The "You Want To Do WHAT?!" Award for 2012: Okay so, there's this dude, right? And he has this balloon thing with a space capsule attached to it and rides it up to over 120,000 feet, which is like 700 miles or something, I don't know. And he opens up the capsule and he's like, right on the edge of outer space! No kidding, it's like the Starship Enterprise could run his ass over if he's not careful. And it's like 500 degress below zero, too. So he starts to crawl out of his space capsule like he totally wants to jump out or something! I KNOW! This other camera shows him looking downward probably thinking either, "Yeah, I can do this, no sweat!" or "This is one of the most f**ked-up things I've ever tried." So he says YOLO and jumps out! On the way down there's no air resistance and he hits over 800 miles an hour, and my cousin told me that's like four times the speed of light. Dude starts to spin and twirl around until he finally remembers to press the SAVE MY ASS button and his parachute opens. Believe it or not he lands safely, but I don't care how many dry cleaners he goes to, he will never get the puke and nasty B.M.s out of that space suit.
Biggest Buzzkill of 2012: Climate change. People keep screwing up the climate and most are completely oblivious to what they are doing. This summer saw the biggest ever melting of Arctic ice, and that by itself has world-wide consequences, mainly in the disruption of long-established weather patterns and warmer-than-normal sea temperatures, which generate bigger, meaner and more destructive storms and hurricanes (hello, Hurricane Sandy). The shape of things to come? Yeah, most likely. Is anything going to be done about it? Not until it's too late.
Best Things of 2012: "The Walking Dead," chocolate wine, Greek yogurt, board game parties with friends, sushi, "Sons of Anarchy," vegetarianism, desert sunsets, more states approving same-sex marriage, clear dark moonless nights, and of course RABBITS!
Worst Things of 2012: Republicans, conservative trolls on Facebook, Fox News, the NRA, religion, terrorism, bigotry, hillbillies with guns, animal abuse, murdered children.
Proof That Some People Still Live in the Dark Ages in 2012: The astonishing, unrepentant and deliberate ignorance of some Republican legislators regarding rape. The very idea of "legitimate" rape, and the belief that a woman's body can "shut down" the pregnancy process after a rape clearly shows that they are beyond any kind of help or redemption. The fact that they are anywhere near a public office shows that their supporters are equally pathetic and worthless, and they deserve nothing but the highest contempt and most strident condemnation.
Extra Credit for Scientific Achievement in 2012: The landing of the Curiosity Mars Rover. Sheer joy, and an absolute, unmitigated triumph. The fact that they were receiving photographs from the surface of Mars within SECONDS of landing is completely mind-blowing.
Mr. "No I Can't Keep It In My Pants and Thank You for Noticing" for 2012: Gen. David Petraeus. Really? Are you that desperate? You just threw away your marriage, your career, your reputation and your legacy. I hope it was worth it, but I'm sure it wasn't.
Loathsome Disgusting Toilet Scum of 2012: Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor, Jim DeMint, Orrin Hatch, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Allen West, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, that token Negro in the Republican primary debates, Sean Hannity or anyone on Fox News. Sadly, this looks like last year's list. Nothing changes.
Ultimate Obnoxious Blowhard of 2012: Donald Trump. Once again, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that a huge amount of money can't buy even the tiniest iota of class. He truly is a national embarrassment and a disgrace.
Best Reason To Remain Hopeful in 2013: Rachel Maddow said it best in a short promo-segment on MSNBC. She said that in the last election, we had an opportunity to defund Planned Parenthood, institutionalize bigotry by outlawing same-sex marriage, continue giving outlandish, obscene tax breaks to people who already have so much, privatize Social Security and Medicare, pack the Supreme Court with right-wing creeps for decades into the future, and listed a number of other horrible legal consequences of electing Romney president. She said we had the opportunity to do all that... AND WE SAID NO! That fact, that the American electorate finally said enough of the extremist conservative bullshit and decisively kicked the Republican party square in the crotch, means that there is still hope for our democratic form of government.
I'd like to think that 2013 will be better than 2012, but I'm starting to realize that these days, the best you can hope for is that 2013 won't be quite as awful.
Showing posts with label romney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label romney. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Monday, November 19, 2012
View From A Cliff
It's been nearly two weeks since the 2012 elections and they are still reverberating through the nation. Conservative nut-jobs are getting back into their normal mode of slowly-simmering hateful insanity after an extended period of unbridled paranoid schizophrenia when Obama won a second term (I have to admit I did not help the situation much when I went into full troll mode on a number of news sites, rubbing their noses in their ignominious defeat, and I don't mind telling you I had a really good time doing it).
One thing that has become quite apparent recently is that defeated, disgraced Mitt Romney is definitely on some sort of kick-ass anti-depressant/anti-psychotic drugs. On a recent conference call to his duped and defrauded donors, Romney placed the blame for his decisive, unequivocal loss everywhere except where it really needed to be placed, on himself. It was weirdly pathetic but not really surprising, given his innate cowardice and total lack of integrity, to hear him blame minorities and women for voting overwhelmingly Democratic, and only because they received "gifts" from the Obama campaign. Hispanics received the Dream Act, which Romney called an "amnesty program," college-aged women received free contraception and blacks got more food stamps and welfare. I voted for Obama and I didn't get a single damned present, other than the joy of seeing him re-elected. Where is my gift, god damn it?
It's hard to believe that someone would be so oblivious to the offensive racism and sexism of such remarks, but apparently Romney is that someone. The fact that he thinks the vote of college-aged women can be bought with some free contraception is breathtaking in its arrogant stupidity. Because we know, the only thing young college women care about is contraception. Same thing with the Hispanics only caring about the Dream Act, and as for food stamps I guess it doesn't make a difference to him that the majority of people who get food stamps are white, and a great many of them vote Republican.
The Republicans are STILL doubling-down on their ridiculous trickle-down theory (and it's a testament to the blinding stupidity of their supporters that anyone is even talking about that anymore) and have transmuted that disgraced, discredited ideology into the "makers and takers" line, in which they divide the country into those who supposedly make wealth and those who take it. This is just another toxic permutation of the "us and them" dichotomy that the Republicans have been flogging for decades, to demonize a significant segment of their fellow American citizens by turning them into "the enemy," someone to blame for everything that has ever gone wrong.
Romney also made some other completely incredulous remarks about Bill Clinton calling him up after the election and commiserating with him, and doing everything but come out and say that Romney should have won. It was the weirdest thing ever, and beyond any rational belief. Clinton worked extremely hard for Obama and campaigned tirelessly for him. To think that he would call Romney and tell him that he was the better candidate, is completely insane and batshit-crazy. I've always considered Romney to be incredibly awkward, weird and creepy but his post-election blatherings show with little doubt that he has some serious mental health issues and delusional fantasies which desperately need to be addressed by qualified mental health professionals. What a horrible, infinitely dangerous President he would have been.
So now we're moving away from elections and into the fun-house world of the "fiscal cliff." That is the Congress-made line in the sand that was a product of the debt ceiling fiasco in 2010. Congress and the president couldn't come together to act on the national debt so they created this "poison pill" situation which presumably would force the government into some sort of corrective action on the debt or face horrible, dire consequences as the Bush-era tax cuts go away on December 31, 2012, and everyone wakes up on New Years day with a hangover and a huge extra tax burden.
For some reason the fiscal cliff is being cast as a sort of natural, organic and unavoidable catastrophe, like a 10.0 earthquake or an asteroid collision, and not something completely man-made and artificial. Congress created the fiscal cliff, and is now cowering in fear in front of it as if it was a Frankenstein monster gone wild. Oh what a surprise - imagine creating a financial Armageddon scenario and then actually having to deal with it at some point! Who in Congress ever thought that they would be held responsible for things that they do?
So, both sides are hunkering down in their usual positions: the Obama administration pushing for increased revenue (i.e. taxes) on the ultra-wealthy, and the Republicans screaming that taxing rich people is worse than child molestation and will kill the millions of jobs that those wealthy "job-creators" somehow forgot to create over the last two years. The Republican mantra is that rich people create jobs - something that is definitively and repeatedly refuted by financial experts of every kind, like here, here and here. The middle class creates those jobs, by creating "demand" for products and services and having the money to pay for them. More demand means more jobs - plain and simple. Seriously, how hard is that to understand?
The Obama people have an election triumph and the accompanying political capital on their side, and have shrewdly boxed the Republicans in by saying that they will keep the tax breaks in place for 98% of wage-earners in this country, but allow them to rise back to Clinton-era levels for the upper 2%. If the Republicans push back on that, they will be seen as sacrificing tax breaks for middle class to finance more tax relief for the very wealthy, who already have so much. It will be very interesting to see who blinks first, and my bet is that it will be the Republicans. Obama learned his lesson about caving in to Republicans two years ago, and I will bet any amount of money that now, at the start of his second term, he has nothing to lose by staring the Republicans down and holding their butts to the fire.
So, it promises to be an eventful end to the year, which has been one of the most tumultuous years in recent memory. Between the primaries and the election, and now the fiscal cliff and the upcoming end of the Mayan calendar in December, we can be sure the bullet trains to Crazy Town will be running 24/7 through the end of 2012.
One thing that has become quite apparent recently is that defeated, disgraced Mitt Romney is definitely on some sort of kick-ass anti-depressant/anti-psychotic drugs. On a recent conference call to his duped and defrauded donors, Romney placed the blame for his decisive, unequivocal loss everywhere except where it really needed to be placed, on himself. It was weirdly pathetic but not really surprising, given his innate cowardice and total lack of integrity, to hear him blame minorities and women for voting overwhelmingly Democratic, and only because they received "gifts" from the Obama campaign. Hispanics received the Dream Act, which Romney called an "amnesty program," college-aged women received free contraception and blacks got more food stamps and welfare. I voted for Obama and I didn't get a single damned present, other than the joy of seeing him re-elected. Where is my gift, god damn it?
It's hard to believe that someone would be so oblivious to the offensive racism and sexism of such remarks, but apparently Romney is that someone. The fact that he thinks the vote of college-aged women can be bought with some free contraception is breathtaking in its arrogant stupidity. Because we know, the only thing young college women care about is contraception. Same thing with the Hispanics only caring about the Dream Act, and as for food stamps I guess it doesn't make a difference to him that the majority of people who get food stamps are white, and a great many of them vote Republican.
The Republicans are STILL doubling-down on their ridiculous trickle-down theory (and it's a testament to the blinding stupidity of their supporters that anyone is even talking about that anymore) and have transmuted that disgraced, discredited ideology into the "makers and takers" line, in which they divide the country into those who supposedly make wealth and those who take it. This is just another toxic permutation of the "us and them" dichotomy that the Republicans have been flogging for decades, to demonize a significant segment of their fellow American citizens by turning them into "the enemy," someone to blame for everything that has ever gone wrong.
Romney also made some other completely incredulous remarks about Bill Clinton calling him up after the election and commiserating with him, and doing everything but come out and say that Romney should have won. It was the weirdest thing ever, and beyond any rational belief. Clinton worked extremely hard for Obama and campaigned tirelessly for him. To think that he would call Romney and tell him that he was the better candidate, is completely insane and batshit-crazy. I've always considered Romney to be incredibly awkward, weird and creepy but his post-election blatherings show with little doubt that he has some serious mental health issues and delusional fantasies which desperately need to be addressed by qualified mental health professionals. What a horrible, infinitely dangerous President he would have been.
So now we're moving away from elections and into the fun-house world of the "fiscal cliff." That is the Congress-made line in the sand that was a product of the debt ceiling fiasco in 2010. Congress and the president couldn't come together to act on the national debt so they created this "poison pill" situation which presumably would force the government into some sort of corrective action on the debt or face horrible, dire consequences as the Bush-era tax cuts go away on December 31, 2012, and everyone wakes up on New Years day with a hangover and a huge extra tax burden.
For some reason the fiscal cliff is being cast as a sort of natural, organic and unavoidable catastrophe, like a 10.0 earthquake or an asteroid collision, and not something completely man-made and artificial. Congress created the fiscal cliff, and is now cowering in fear in front of it as if it was a Frankenstein monster gone wild. Oh what a surprise - imagine creating a financial Armageddon scenario and then actually having to deal with it at some point! Who in Congress ever thought that they would be held responsible for things that they do?
So, both sides are hunkering down in their usual positions: the Obama administration pushing for increased revenue (i.e. taxes) on the ultra-wealthy, and the Republicans screaming that taxing rich people is worse than child molestation and will kill the millions of jobs that those wealthy "job-creators" somehow forgot to create over the last two years. The Republican mantra is that rich people create jobs - something that is definitively and repeatedly refuted by financial experts of every kind, like here, here and here. The middle class creates those jobs, by creating "demand" for products and services and having the money to pay for them. More demand means more jobs - plain and simple. Seriously, how hard is that to understand?
The Obama people have an election triumph and the accompanying political capital on their side, and have shrewdly boxed the Republicans in by saying that they will keep the tax breaks in place for 98% of wage-earners in this country, but allow them to rise back to Clinton-era levels for the upper 2%. If the Republicans push back on that, they will be seen as sacrificing tax breaks for middle class to finance more tax relief for the very wealthy, who already have so much. It will be very interesting to see who blinks first, and my bet is that it will be the Republicans. Obama learned his lesson about caving in to Republicans two years ago, and I will bet any amount of money that now, at the start of his second term, he has nothing to lose by staring the Republicans down and holding their butts to the fire.
So, it promises to be an eventful end to the year, which has been one of the most tumultuous years in recent memory. Between the primaries and the election, and now the fiscal cliff and the upcoming end of the Mayan calendar in December, we can be sure the bullet trains to Crazy Town will be running 24/7 through the end of 2012.
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