6:44 pm:
It's election night 2012 and I'm here with my blog, Facebook, CNN and a couple of other things on my laptop, in front of my flat-screen TV. I feel so digitally connected and "with-it," I can't even tell you. I'll be making periodic updates to this blog post in real time as stuff happens. Hopefully most everything will be resolved in reasonable time but I am going to be here for the long haul. I will be taking a "Sons of Anarchy" break around 8:30. Ain't gonna miss my SOA.
6:57 pm:
Early results from Massachusetts shows Elizabeth Warren in a slight lead over Dirtbag Deluxe Scott Brown. Kick his sorry ass, Liz!
7:06 pm:
More early results: Obama takes New York, New Jersey, New Mexico and Michigan, Romney takes Texas, Louisiana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota and a couple of other states that no one gives a shit about.
7:08 pm:
Florida is tied 50-50 with 74% of the vote in. PLEASE Florida, don't be a bunch of assholes.
7:15 pm:
Pennsylvania my home state goes for Obama! WOOHOO! Thank you, PA, I am loving you big time.
7:17 pm:
Arizona senate race between Richard Carmona and slimy scum-sucker Jeff Flake still too close to call. It would be SUCH a sweet triumph if Carmona won.
7:29 pm:
Wisconsin goes to Obama and their 10 electoral votes puts him ahead of Romney for the first time tonight, 158-153. I like this trend.
7:42 pm:
NBC News projecting Elizabeth Warren the winner for the Senate seat in Massachusetts, over Scott Brown. YESSSSS! Wonderful, wonderful news!!!
7:46 pm:
Indiana Senate race has Democrat John Donnelly projected to win over fundamentalist asswipe Richard Mourdock ("rape is god's will"). Karma is a bitch and so are you, Mourdock, so grab your ankles and take it up the butt like a good Republican loser.
7:50 pm:
NBC News projects New Hampshire going for Obama! YAAY! This was a hotly contested state and they swung the right way. Democrats making some great gains in Senate races. Keep it up!!!
8:04 pm:
Electoral vote count tied at 162-162. Not worried.
8:06 pm:
Claire McCaskill wins over gigantic bowel movement Todd Akin in Missouri. YES YES YES!!!!
8:17 pm:
Formerly Democratic Senate seat in Kansas goes Republican. Do not like.
8:34 pm:
Arizona, the Land That Time Forget, goes for Romney. This state is full of ignorant, uneducated dirtbags.
8:43 pm:
Minnesota goes to Obama. Whoopee!!
9:00 pm:
Obama wins a BIG, BIG prize - California - 55 electoral votes! Also Washington, Oregon & Hawaii. Damn!!! Obama is in striking distance of victory with 243!!!!!
9:05 pm:
North Carolina goes to Romney. Bastards.
9:12 pm
OH MY GOD!!!!! OHIO GOES TO OBAMA!!!! OBAMA WINS!! THANK YOU JESUS!!!! WOOHOO!!!!!
9:55 pm:
Fox News is going nuts, they are the funniest show on television. Karl Rove is grasping at thin air, trying to say that Romney has a chance in Ohio. Even Fox News' own number crunchers say NFW, Ohio goes to Obama. SO damned funny!
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
A Different Kind of Storm
Everyone is taking a break from the usual pre-election programming to concentrate on Hurricane Sandy, which just blew through Manhattan and is probably soaking my home state of Pennsylvania right now. The news media went into full-blown apocalypse mode for this, with the kind of breathless whirlpool of coverage usually reserved for assassinations or major earthquakes. Even days before, they were sounding the warning claxons about "Frankenstorm" making its way up the east coast and putting a real damper on everyone's Halloween. And is "claxon" an awesome word or what?
Some people are already saying that the unusual trajectory this storm has taken is related to global warming and the huge, unprecedented reduction in the Arctic ice sheet, which alters ocean currents and air temperatures in such a way that big, weird storms which move in new, unexpected pathways will start becoming more frequent. While it's still probably premature to link the two events, I think there is a great deal of truth in the idea that human-caused climate change will alter the planetary weather engine in ways we can't even yet imagine, and more unpleasant things like these loose-cannon superstorms are in our future.
The other big storm of late has taken a temporary back seat to the march of Hurricane Sandy, and that is the presidential election, now just one week away. It seems like this election has been going on for years, and this last week will no doubt be the most intense week ever, with everybody pulling out all the stops when it comes to trying to sway the last two or three undecided voters out there. It's beyond me how anyone could be undecided about who to vote for.
I've heard people on the radio say that there's "not much difference" between Obama and Romney, and that statement completely blows my mind. In my opinion the two candidates could not be more different, both in style and substance. Obama seems so intellectual, so measured, controlled and sincere; Romney so aloof, privileged, entitled and hypocritical. There is little question that given their backgrounds, Obama truly understands what the middle class people, who are in many ways the backbone of this country, have greatly suffered due to the economic collapse of 2008-2009. He really "gets" what they're going through and empathizes with them. Romney, on the other hand, has had every single thing in his life handed to him, coming from a family of privilege and power, and is completely and utterly clueless about what average people have to go through to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.
Likewise, the vice presidential candidates are quite different. Biden is loud, gregarious, sometimes prone to embarrassing gaffes and misstatements, but given his background you have no doubt he understands what it is like to go through very rough periods in your life and still manage to triumph over adversity using little more than sheer strength of character. Paul "Lyin" Ryan is an uber-nerd, someone who's obviously much more comfortable around masses of fiscal data and reports than around people, and comes up with a witches-brew of spending cuts to government programs which aid the poor, the elderly and students (to name a few) in order to fund massive, unnecessary defense spending and more tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy one-percenters, who already have so very much but still want to take more and more.
The differences even extend to the candidates' wives. Michelle Obama is beautiful, sleek, intelligent, articulate and very easy for anyone to relate to. She has such great poise and presence, and in my opinion has been one of the most notable and successful First Ladies in recent history. Ann Romney, on the other hand, is brittle, imperious, condescending, sharp-tongued, elitist and thoroughly unsympathetic to anyone outside of her own socio-economic class. With her fake, painted-on country-club smirk and mannerisms, you just know she sits around drinking appletinis with her wealthy cronies, cackling about how pathetic poor people are and complaining about how hard it is to find qualified domestic help these days who won't expect to be paid more than $5 an hour and won't steal you blind behind your back.
There is so very much riding on what happens next Tuesday, but to me one of the most important is the future of the Supreme Court. Latest prediction is that the President-elect will get to choose at least one and possibly two new Justices, and that will directly affect each and every one of us for decades to come. Right now the Court is split 5-4 in favor of upholding Roe v. Wade, but it would only take one Court appointment to reverse that to 5-4 in favor of overturning it. Then you can absolutely certain that anti-abortion zealots would push a test case through the lower courts and into the Supreme Court, and Roe v. Wade would be scrapped, sending the abortion question back into the states, where many if not all of the red states would outlaw it completely. That would be an astonishing tragedy and catastrophe for anyone who holds dear the concepts of freedom and government not making decisions in such an incredibly personal thing such as family planning.
Another very important thing, related to the Supreme Court, is their horrific and spectacularly awful Citizens' United ruling, which unleashed a torrent of untraceable, unaccountable money into a political system already mortally choked and corrupted with cash. One of the most wrong-headed and destructive rulings ever, a top priority should be to overturn it, with a constitutional amendment if necessary. The choice of President could not be more important to this vital legislative task. One candidate will fully support reversing the ruling, and other candidate will do everything he can to keep it in place, because as he famously stated, "Corporations are people, too." I will leave it up to my discerning readers to figure out which candidate is which.
Funny thing about these neoconservatives, they will scream unmercifully about how the evil, incompetent and corrupt government is blatantly interfering in everyone's lives and making choices for them, but they are perfectly fine as long as this interference is with the right to abortion, or marriage equality, or any number of personal-freedom issues they personally oppose. They seem to think that government is evil and satanic if it messes with something they believe in, but perfectly fine and proper if it goes after things they don't. According to them, it's okay if government restricts the freedoms of people they don't like, but it is a horrendous abomination if it seeks to restrict their own freedoms and choices.
Thus is the ultimate contraction in the conservative point of view - as long as government is doing what I like (or conversely, attacking things I don't like), it can have free rein and untrammeled authority to do whatever it pleases. But just let the government try to do something to curtail something in which they fervently believe, for instance, gun control - outlawing the sale of semi-automatic assault weapons comes to mind - then people scream that government is a vile, cancerous conspiracy hell-bent on destroying the very fabric of this nation. Government-provided farm subsidies could not be more "American", but affordable health care is "socialist." It is this cultural and political schizophrenia, this infinitely subjective cherry-picking of what is right and what is wrong, that ultimately dooms neoconservative thinking to the intellectual trash-heap.
One week to election day, and is Hurricane Sandy a metaphor for the shitstorm that may be released on this country as a result - one that will last not a couple of days, but for four long years.
Some people are already saying that the unusual trajectory this storm has taken is related to global warming and the huge, unprecedented reduction in the Arctic ice sheet, which alters ocean currents and air temperatures in such a way that big, weird storms which move in new, unexpected pathways will start becoming more frequent. While it's still probably premature to link the two events, I think there is a great deal of truth in the idea that human-caused climate change will alter the planetary weather engine in ways we can't even yet imagine, and more unpleasant things like these loose-cannon superstorms are in our future.
The other big storm of late has taken a temporary back seat to the march of Hurricane Sandy, and that is the presidential election, now just one week away. It seems like this election has been going on for years, and this last week will no doubt be the most intense week ever, with everybody pulling out all the stops when it comes to trying to sway the last two or three undecided voters out there. It's beyond me how anyone could be undecided about who to vote for.
I've heard people on the radio say that there's "not much difference" between Obama and Romney, and that statement completely blows my mind. In my opinion the two candidates could not be more different, both in style and substance. Obama seems so intellectual, so measured, controlled and sincere; Romney so aloof, privileged, entitled and hypocritical. There is little question that given their backgrounds, Obama truly understands what the middle class people, who are in many ways the backbone of this country, have greatly suffered due to the economic collapse of 2008-2009. He really "gets" what they're going through and empathizes with them. Romney, on the other hand, has had every single thing in his life handed to him, coming from a family of privilege and power, and is completely and utterly clueless about what average people have to go through to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.
Likewise, the vice presidential candidates are quite different. Biden is loud, gregarious, sometimes prone to embarrassing gaffes and misstatements, but given his background you have no doubt he understands what it is like to go through very rough periods in your life and still manage to triumph over adversity using little more than sheer strength of character. Paul "Lyin" Ryan is an uber-nerd, someone who's obviously much more comfortable around masses of fiscal data and reports than around people, and comes up with a witches-brew of spending cuts to government programs which aid the poor, the elderly and students (to name a few) in order to fund massive, unnecessary defense spending and more tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy one-percenters, who already have so very much but still want to take more and more.
The differences even extend to the candidates' wives. Michelle Obama is beautiful, sleek, intelligent, articulate and very easy for anyone to relate to. She has such great poise and presence, and in my opinion has been one of the most notable and successful First Ladies in recent history. Ann Romney, on the other hand, is brittle, imperious, condescending, sharp-tongued, elitist and thoroughly unsympathetic to anyone outside of her own socio-economic class. With her fake, painted-on country-club smirk and mannerisms, you just know she sits around drinking appletinis with her wealthy cronies, cackling about how pathetic poor people are and complaining about how hard it is to find qualified domestic help these days who won't expect to be paid more than $5 an hour and won't steal you blind behind your back.
There is so very much riding on what happens next Tuesday, but to me one of the most important is the future of the Supreme Court. Latest prediction is that the President-elect will get to choose at least one and possibly two new Justices, and that will directly affect each and every one of us for decades to come. Right now the Court is split 5-4 in favor of upholding Roe v. Wade, but it would only take one Court appointment to reverse that to 5-4 in favor of overturning it. Then you can absolutely certain that anti-abortion zealots would push a test case through the lower courts and into the Supreme Court, and Roe v. Wade would be scrapped, sending the abortion question back into the states, where many if not all of the red states would outlaw it completely. That would be an astonishing tragedy and catastrophe for anyone who holds dear the concepts of freedom and government not making decisions in such an incredibly personal thing such as family planning.
Another very important thing, related to the Supreme Court, is their horrific and spectacularly awful Citizens' United ruling, which unleashed a torrent of untraceable, unaccountable money into a political system already mortally choked and corrupted with cash. One of the most wrong-headed and destructive rulings ever, a top priority should be to overturn it, with a constitutional amendment if necessary. The choice of President could not be more important to this vital legislative task. One candidate will fully support reversing the ruling, and other candidate will do everything he can to keep it in place, because as he famously stated, "Corporations are people, too." I will leave it up to my discerning readers to figure out which candidate is which.
Funny thing about these neoconservatives, they will scream unmercifully about how the evil, incompetent and corrupt government is blatantly interfering in everyone's lives and making choices for them, but they are perfectly fine as long as this interference is with the right to abortion, or marriage equality, or any number of personal-freedom issues they personally oppose. They seem to think that government is evil and satanic if it messes with something they believe in, but perfectly fine and proper if it goes after things they don't. According to them, it's okay if government restricts the freedoms of people they don't like, but it is a horrendous abomination if it seeks to restrict their own freedoms and choices.
Thus is the ultimate contraction in the conservative point of view - as long as government is doing what I like (or conversely, attacking things I don't like), it can have free rein and untrammeled authority to do whatever it pleases. But just let the government try to do something to curtail something in which they fervently believe, for instance, gun control - outlawing the sale of semi-automatic assault weapons comes to mind - then people scream that government is a vile, cancerous conspiracy hell-bent on destroying the very fabric of this nation. Government-provided farm subsidies could not be more "American", but affordable health care is "socialist." It is this cultural and political schizophrenia, this infinitely subjective cherry-picking of what is right and what is wrong, that ultimately dooms neoconservative thinking to the intellectual trash-heap.
One week to election day, and is Hurricane Sandy a metaphor for the shitstorm that may be released on this country as a result - one that will last not a couple of days, but for four long years.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Four Weeks
It's now four weeks until the 2012 elections, and things are going just about as expected; that is, chaotic, mind-blowing and depressing all at the same time.
The presidential race is tighter than ever, and while it's pretty normal for the race to get really tight in the last couple of weeks, there is an uncomfortable trend going on. Every time an obscure poll shows a one-point shift in the highly fluid preferences of some media-created segment of voters, it creates a seismic jolt through the news media which is analyzed and re-analyzed to death. The polls are watched with the same intensity and anxiety as the Cuban missile crisis created in the early 60s. For those of you too young to remember that (unfortunately that does not include me) I can tell you those were pretty scary times. There was a palpable fear and terror in the air, obvious even to my ten-year-old self, and a real foreboding of what the future might bring. While a Romney presidency wouldn't quite be the same as a nuclear missile crisis, in many ways it would be every bit as destructive. More on that later.
There was the first of three presidential debates last Wednesday, and President Obama sent some clone of himself in his place who really wasn't up to the task. Romney was there in full creepy-mannequin mode, looking and acting like Satan's ventriloquist dummy and spewing lies and bullshit like some kind of demented lawn sprinkler set on high. All of a sudden, Romney professed to have found his love and support for 100% of the American electorate, even though back in May of this year he wrote off 47% of those very same people as lazy, useless leeches. Let me just say once and for all that Romney will never EVER know the financial pressures middle-class people have to face in their lives. He was born into a life of wealth and privilege, and anyone who even thinks about installing a CAR ELEVATOR in their home or taking a tax write-off of $77,000 (about 50% more than the $51,914 the average American household earns, according to the Census Bureau) for his wife's DANCING HORSE - categorizing it as a "business expense" (????) - has no idea what it's like to stretch a food budget to the point of breaking or dressing their children in hand-me-downs.
It is painfully obvious that Romney and his imperious, elitist, over-Botoxed trollop of a wife care only for the ultra-wealthy people in their own socio-economic class and will never do anything for the lower classes other than disdainfully look down their noses at them. And there is always the unresolved problem of Romney's refusal to make a full disclosure of his federal income taxes even though the American people have demanded he do so. For someone who proclaims so loudly to be "pro-business" and "pro-American" his propensity for employing offshore tax shelters for his enormous wealth tells a different story. His arrogance is truly monumental, and his contempt for the American people and the values upon which this country was founded is staggering and appalling.
The media have already labeled last weeks' debate as a "game changer," and it's a little hard to believe that after a month or more of Romney being a world-class fuck-up and saying and doing completely preposterous, absurd things, all that could be changed in a 90-minute debate. This just illustrates the short attention span of the American voter, as aggravated and dictated by the 30-minute news cycle.
As if to emphasize the perversity of politics (as if it needed emphasized), none other than Big Bird, a long-running character on the PBS children's series "Sesame Street," was dragged kicking and screaming into the debate when Romney gleefully announced he would "fire" Big Bird as part of his defunding of public television. I won't even mention what a miniscule part of the national budget public television comprises, but it only further illustrates the ignorant, small-minded hatred Republican supporters have for education and the arts. The National Endowment for the Arts is another favorite target, because god forbid we should spend a little bit of money enriching the cultural and intellectual life of this country instead of wasting it on another civilian-killing drone in Afghanistan.
On the state level, elections are no less contested but a lot more tawdry. One of Arizona's senate seats is up for grabs, and slimy scumbag Republican Jeff Flake is up against former Surgeon General Richard Carmona. Flake thought he would have an easy coast right into the Senate, but he's finding it a lot more difficult than he thought, even in a very conservative state like this one. What is really alarming are all the media ads paid for by super-PACs, those heinous abominations the dipshits on the Supreme Court created. But I found out recently that super-PACs are only one facet of this hot mess.
Rich people seeking to sway the outcome of an election can dump a bunch of their money into a super-PAC but they will be identified. But if they choose, they can create a 501(c)(4) "social welfare" entity to dump money into with complete anonymity. These organizations can basically do whatever the hell they please with all this money and lobby for any candidate or legislative agenda. The law says that in May of next year these entities will have to report their funding and donors to the IRS, but the entities can be disbanded at any time (such as right after the election), and will not have to reveal one damned thing about their finances or activities. This is a truly frightening perversion of the American democracy that will go a very long way in completely poisoning and corrupting our system of government. It's like a get-out-of-jail-free card for anyone with a lot of money seeking to buy an election. Once again in this country, money speaks louder than anything or anybody.
Locally, it's even worse and sleazier, with Republican candidates invoking the name and image of President Obama every chance they get as some kind of damning mantra against their opponent. Again funded mostly by super-PACs, these ads seek to link a candidate with Obama in hopes of generating a knee-jerk reaction in the dimwitted, low-information voters that pollute this state. And ancient, pathetic asshole Joe Arpaio is running for Maricopa county sheriff for the 100th time, and despite the fact that he's an 80-year-old jerk and a buffoon, he will most likely get re-elected by the stupid voters in this county.
A Romney presidency would be such an unmitigated disaster for this country on every conceivable level. I honestly don't know which would be worse - the two or possibly three Supreme Court vacancies a President Romney would most likely have an opportunity to fill (leading to an unbreakable conservative majority on the Court for several decades which would overturn Roe v. Wade and prohibit gay marriage, among many other horrible things) or the fact that the US would be a big step closer to a theocracy, in which the Christian religion would have a much bigger say in the lives and liberty of ALL Americans, Christian or not. For a country that was ostensibly founded on religious freedom, government and religion have developed an extremely toxic relationship and a deadly embrace, and the more religion tightens its grip on government, the less freedom and liberty we have.
Americans are so ridiculously obsessed with religion and a lot of them see it as a simple-minded one-size-fits-all cure for the myriad of problems we face. But that is putting your faith in a fairy tale, like relying on Santa Claus to save the world from destruction, and the easiest solutions are rarely the best. Any "solution" to a set of problems which require free-thinking people to conform to a set of rigid, dogmatic and unscientific delusions and corrupted prehistoric claptrap will spell the end of this country faster than any terrorist attack or environmental disaster.
The presidential race is tighter than ever, and while it's pretty normal for the race to get really tight in the last couple of weeks, there is an uncomfortable trend going on. Every time an obscure poll shows a one-point shift in the highly fluid preferences of some media-created segment of voters, it creates a seismic jolt through the news media which is analyzed and re-analyzed to death. The polls are watched with the same intensity and anxiety as the Cuban missile crisis created in the early 60s. For those of you too young to remember that (unfortunately that does not include me) I can tell you those were pretty scary times. There was a palpable fear and terror in the air, obvious even to my ten-year-old self, and a real foreboding of what the future might bring. While a Romney presidency wouldn't quite be the same as a nuclear missile crisis, in many ways it would be every bit as destructive. More on that later.
There was the first of three presidential debates last Wednesday, and President Obama sent some clone of himself in his place who really wasn't up to the task. Romney was there in full creepy-mannequin mode, looking and acting like Satan's ventriloquist dummy and spewing lies and bullshit like some kind of demented lawn sprinkler set on high. All of a sudden, Romney professed to have found his love and support for 100% of the American electorate, even though back in May of this year he wrote off 47% of those very same people as lazy, useless leeches. Let me just say once and for all that Romney will never EVER know the financial pressures middle-class people have to face in their lives. He was born into a life of wealth and privilege, and anyone who even thinks about installing a CAR ELEVATOR in their home or taking a tax write-off of $77,000 (about 50% more than the $51,914 the average American household earns, according to the Census Bureau) for his wife's DANCING HORSE - categorizing it as a "business expense" (????) - has no idea what it's like to stretch a food budget to the point of breaking or dressing their children in hand-me-downs.
It is painfully obvious that Romney and his imperious, elitist, over-Botoxed trollop of a wife care only for the ultra-wealthy people in their own socio-economic class and will never do anything for the lower classes other than disdainfully look down their noses at them. And there is always the unresolved problem of Romney's refusal to make a full disclosure of his federal income taxes even though the American people have demanded he do so. For someone who proclaims so loudly to be "pro-business" and "pro-American" his propensity for employing offshore tax shelters for his enormous wealth tells a different story. His arrogance is truly monumental, and his contempt for the American people and the values upon which this country was founded is staggering and appalling.
The media have already labeled last weeks' debate as a "game changer," and it's a little hard to believe that after a month or more of Romney being a world-class fuck-up and saying and doing completely preposterous, absurd things, all that could be changed in a 90-minute debate. This just illustrates the short attention span of the American voter, as aggravated and dictated by the 30-minute news cycle.
As if to emphasize the perversity of politics (as if it needed emphasized), none other than Big Bird, a long-running character on the PBS children's series "Sesame Street," was dragged kicking and screaming into the debate when Romney gleefully announced he would "fire" Big Bird as part of his defunding of public television. I won't even mention what a miniscule part of the national budget public television comprises, but it only further illustrates the ignorant, small-minded hatred Republican supporters have for education and the arts. The National Endowment for the Arts is another favorite target, because god forbid we should spend a little bit of money enriching the cultural and intellectual life of this country instead of wasting it on another civilian-killing drone in Afghanistan.
On the state level, elections are no less contested but a lot more tawdry. One of Arizona's senate seats is up for grabs, and slimy scumbag Republican Jeff Flake is up against former Surgeon General Richard Carmona. Flake thought he would have an easy coast right into the Senate, but he's finding it a lot more difficult than he thought, even in a very conservative state like this one. What is really alarming are all the media ads paid for by super-PACs, those heinous abominations the dipshits on the Supreme Court created. But I found out recently that super-PACs are only one facet of this hot mess.
Rich people seeking to sway the outcome of an election can dump a bunch of their money into a super-PAC but they will be identified. But if they choose, they can create a 501(c)(4) "social welfare" entity to dump money into with complete anonymity. These organizations can basically do whatever the hell they please with all this money and lobby for any candidate or legislative agenda. The law says that in May of next year these entities will have to report their funding and donors to the IRS, but the entities can be disbanded at any time (such as right after the election), and will not have to reveal one damned thing about their finances or activities. This is a truly frightening perversion of the American democracy that will go a very long way in completely poisoning and corrupting our system of government. It's like a get-out-of-jail-free card for anyone with a lot of money seeking to buy an election. Once again in this country, money speaks louder than anything or anybody.
Locally, it's even worse and sleazier, with Republican candidates invoking the name and image of President Obama every chance they get as some kind of damning mantra against their opponent. Again funded mostly by super-PACs, these ads seek to link a candidate with Obama in hopes of generating a knee-jerk reaction in the dimwitted, low-information voters that pollute this state. And ancient, pathetic asshole Joe Arpaio is running for Maricopa county sheriff for the 100th time, and despite the fact that he's an 80-year-old jerk and a buffoon, he will most likely get re-elected by the stupid voters in this county.
A Romney presidency would be such an unmitigated disaster for this country on every conceivable level. I honestly don't know which would be worse - the two or possibly three Supreme Court vacancies a President Romney would most likely have an opportunity to fill (leading to an unbreakable conservative majority on the Court for several decades which would overturn Roe v. Wade and prohibit gay marriage, among many other horrible things) or the fact that the US would be a big step closer to a theocracy, in which the Christian religion would have a much bigger say in the lives and liberty of ALL Americans, Christian or not. For a country that was ostensibly founded on religious freedom, government and religion have developed an extremely toxic relationship and a deadly embrace, and the more religion tightens its grip on government, the less freedom and liberty we have.
Americans are so ridiculously obsessed with religion and a lot of them see it as a simple-minded one-size-fits-all cure for the myriad of problems we face. But that is putting your faith in a fairy tale, like relying on Santa Claus to save the world from destruction, and the easiest solutions are rarely the best. Any "solution" to a set of problems which require free-thinking people to conform to a set of rigid, dogmatic and unscientific delusions and corrupted prehistoric claptrap will spell the end of this country faster than any terrorist attack or environmental disaster.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Meme Madness
I love internet memes - you know, those mostly one-panel images you see on websites that are basically a photograph but with a caption superimposed, most often in the "Impact" font, the font-of-choice for memes. Quirky and off-the-wall, they can take an innocuous photo of something innocent and send it flying down some dark hallway of the human psyche. You can take a 30-year-old photograph and with the right caption, make it as fresh and relevant as if it were shot yesterday. The same meme photo can be used and re-used countless times, making it infinitely recyclable, and each one can be as funny and new as the original.
Making internet memes is a snap, it's coming up with the photo and accompanying concept that's hard. Sometimes you'll see a photo and the right caption will just jump out at you. Other times you'll think of a caption but then spend a huge amount of time finding a photo that will work with it. But that's the challenge and the fun. When you get the perfect picture together with a great caption, well, it rarely gets better than that.
The internet's life-blood is snark, and memes are no different. Just to level-set: "snark" is a combination of sarcasm and wryness. A very dry sense of humor is a necessity, along with total irreverence and a complete disrespect for authority figures. It also helps to have a basically foul temper and cynical outlook, and a big dollop of innate bitchiness will come in quite handy. Obviously, snark and I were made for each other. Add the visual delights of photography, and you have a bottomless pit of fun.
But hey, memes can also be useful, and helpful when it comes to spreading an important message. Below is one of the first memes I created for Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue, for the annual message we put out around Easter. It was seen by over 1,700 people and shared over 500 times. Click for larger image:
Rabbits and memes are a match made in heaven, and much fun can be had when those two get together.
They can also be sweet and aww-inducing, like this one of Kenai blissfully relaxing in the arms of his foster (now adoptive) mom:
But the most fun can be had through smart-assery, of course, with politics and politicians being prime, irresistible targets. Here's one I did for the repulsive mountain of flab known as NJ Governor Chris Christie:
Religion is also a huge target just begging to be disrespected, and I am more than glad to step up to the plate and fire away. Here's one I did for the Agnostic page on Facebook:
And another one:
Memes are loads of fun to think up and create, I feel like I'm just barely getting started with them. I plan on doing many, many more memes in the future and launch them into cyberspace, spreading cheerful (or mean-spirited, as the case may be) snark far and wide. This is a medium tailor-made for me, combining bad attitude with good visuals, and I could not be happier or more thrilled.
There are plenty of memes which I love and which inspire me; this is one of my current favorites:
This takes a bit of explaining, because a lot of people have absolutely no idea what is going on. A huge amount of meme info and history can be found on this great website, www.knowyourmeme.com, the internet meme database. The caption by the seal in the corner is a mangled version of "Oh my God - Penguins!" and its origin is with this meme which first appeared in March 2012:
This is a photo of a rather scary-looking young girl holding up some copies of her favorite children's literature, a mystery series on the order of the old "Hardy Boys" books called "Goosebumps." To translate what she's saying: "Goosebumps - my favorite books." Knowyourmeme.com explains it as "the phonetically written captions are meant to sound like a speech impediment caused by the use of an orthodontic retainer." Soon the initial keyword "Ermahgerd" ("Oh My God") was created, and in six short months this meme exploded on the internet and spawned many, many tasteless variations, leading to the "Perngwens" one above. Yeah, it 's a little harsh to make fun of speech impediments (I should know) but this is just too good to pass up.
So, that's today's crash course in internet memes. As I said I absolutely love these things, and feel I have found one of my true callings. My most cherished dream is to come up with a meme which will go global and be enshrined on Knowyourmeme.com. Other than winning several hundred million dollars in a lottery, that is something that I really, really want. Oh, I also want world peace, but I really like memes, too.
Making internet memes is a snap, it's coming up with the photo and accompanying concept that's hard. Sometimes you'll see a photo and the right caption will just jump out at you. Other times you'll think of a caption but then spend a huge amount of time finding a photo that will work with it. But that's the challenge and the fun. When you get the perfect picture together with a great caption, well, it rarely gets better than that.
The internet's life-blood is snark, and memes are no different. Just to level-set: "snark" is a combination of sarcasm and wryness. A very dry sense of humor is a necessity, along with total irreverence and a complete disrespect for authority figures. It also helps to have a basically foul temper and cynical outlook, and a big dollop of innate bitchiness will come in quite handy. Obviously, snark and I were made for each other. Add the visual delights of photography, and you have a bottomless pit of fun.
But hey, memes can also be useful, and helpful when it comes to spreading an important message. Below is one of the first memes I created for Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue, for the annual message we put out around Easter. It was seen by over 1,700 people and shared over 500 times. Click for larger image:
Rabbits and memes are a match made in heaven, and much fun can be had when those two get together.
They can also be sweet and aww-inducing, like this one of Kenai blissfully relaxing in the arms of his foster (now adoptive) mom:
But the most fun can be had through smart-assery, of course, with politics and politicians being prime, irresistible targets. Here's one I did for the repulsive mountain of flab known as NJ Governor Chris Christie:
Religion is also a huge target just begging to be disrespected, and I am more than glad to step up to the plate and fire away. Here's one I did for the Agnostic page on Facebook:
And another one:
Memes are loads of fun to think up and create, I feel like I'm just barely getting started with them. I plan on doing many, many more memes in the future and launch them into cyberspace, spreading cheerful (or mean-spirited, as the case may be) snark far and wide. This is a medium tailor-made for me, combining bad attitude with good visuals, and I could not be happier or more thrilled.
There are plenty of memes which I love and which inspire me; this is one of my current favorites:
This takes a bit of explaining, because a lot of people have absolutely no idea what is going on. A huge amount of meme info and history can be found on this great website, www.knowyourmeme.com, the internet meme database. The caption by the seal in the corner is a mangled version of "Oh my God - Penguins!" and its origin is with this meme which first appeared in March 2012:
This is a photo of a rather scary-looking young girl holding up some copies of her favorite children's literature, a mystery series on the order of the old "Hardy Boys" books called "Goosebumps." To translate what she's saying: "Goosebumps - my favorite books." Knowyourmeme.com explains it as "the phonetically written captions are meant to sound like a speech impediment caused by the use of an orthodontic retainer." Soon the initial keyword "Ermahgerd" ("Oh My God") was created, and in six short months this meme exploded on the internet and spawned many, many tasteless variations, leading to the "Perngwens" one above. Yeah, it 's a little harsh to make fun of speech impediments (I should know) but this is just too good to pass up.
So, that's today's crash course in internet memes. As I said I absolutely love these things, and feel I have found one of my true callings. My most cherished dream is to come up with a meme which will go global and be enshrined on Knowyourmeme.com. Other than winning several hundred million dollars in a lottery, that is something that I really, really want. Oh, I also want world peace, but I really like memes, too.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Forty-Seven Percent
Yesterday marked 49 days until the elections. Seven weeks, and yesterday was a day not quite like any other.
A surreptitious recording of Republican Mitt Romney at a fundraising event last May in Boca Raton, Florida, was leaked to the media, and it was incendiary. Mitt was in his natural element, talking to a bunch of super-rich supporters who paid $50K per plate to get past the front door, and I have no doubt he really meant everything he said. After all, the event was nominally closed to the new media, and he was among his people. He had no reason to put on any airs for them.
At one point Romney make the astonishing statement that he considers 47% of the American electorate to be freeloaders and victims, and are dependent on the government for all their sustenance. 50 million Americans are, according to Romney, shiftless, lazy, and looking for nothing other than a handout. They feel they are "entitled" to have the government provide food, housing and medical care for them, and do absolutely nothing to fend for themselves or pay their own way. They take everything and give nothing in return. Frankly, I would like to get in on that gig.
The news media went absolutely berserk, as they should, and despite everything else going on in the world this was the big news story. The liberal media had a feeding frenzy, and there was an overabundance of red meat to go around. Even a number of more conservative media outlets and newspapers leveled some withering, merciless criticism on Romney, pointing out in no uncertain terms how totally off-base he was.
The Romney campaign went into major crisis mode, but no amount of whiplash-inducing spin could pull this mess out of the toilet. You could just see his campaign managers running around their office in a panic, bumping into each other, not knowing which forest fire to put out first. But the best was yet to come.
The Romney quote really making the rounds is something that you would never believe a candidate for national office would say. Romney said his "job" is "not to worry about those people" because they will vote for Obama no matter what. So, he is writing off nearly half of the electorate because they do not pay federal income tax, and Romney's tax-cut message would be lost on them.
It is certainly true that a lot of people pay no federal income tax. The tax code is structured in such a way that people of very low income, or senior citizens, or members of the armed forces do not have to pay federal income taxes. That doesn't mean they pay no tax at all. They pay all the other taxes everyone else pays - state tax, local tax, sales taxes, payroll taxes. As a matter of fact, middle and lower classes workers pay payroll taxes, and after you earn $106,800 you pay none at all.
Through all of this, Romney looks the same he always has: ridiculous, stupid, awkward, creepy and floundering around like a fish out of water. His performance in his quest for the White House as been a breathtaking series of gaffes and misstatements, from when he managed to insult the United Kingdom over London's Summer Olympics to writing off any chances of peace in the middle East. He has resolutely refused to turn over anything more than the minimum amount of information regarding his federal income taxes, something which has gained new urgency lately given his assertion that a lot of Americans are bums and leeches. I am convinced that he refuses to make public his tax returns because they will show that HE has not paid anywhere near his fair share of federal income taxes, and perhaps none at all for a number of years. I have four words for him, and I wish every news media outlet in the world would keep repeating them over and over to him: What are you hiding?
Even his phony, brittle wife Ann has reinforced all the negative impressions about her and her husband when, in an interview, the subject of his tax returns came up and she snarled in as imperious a tone as she could muster (and she's had a ton of practice) that "you people" (meaning the press and the American electorate) have gotten all the tax information that you're going to get, so be satisfied with that and STFU.
Still, no one is counting Romney and his campaign out because it doesn't matter to most of his Republican supporters what stupid, ill-advised and idiotic things he says or does, they will support him no matter what. Facts be damned, those people will vote for Romney even if he was proven to be a child molester who set a nursing home on fire while selling China white heroin to grade-schoolers. Republicans are never, ever encumbered by facts or reality. Their racist hatred of Barack Obama is stronger than any love of country or sympathy for their fellow citizens.
Presidential candidates have recovered from serious setbacks in their campaign before, but it's hard to see how Romney can run a credible, viable campaign from here on. It would be very interesting indeed to watch Romney's chances flame out and crumble, but it's impossible to overestimate the capacity of the American voter to see what they want to see, and ignore everything else. And above all, this election season is one where substance takes a distant back seat to style, and if your candidate says or does something really stupid, the best thing to do is double-down, dig your heels in, and deny, obfuscate, and deceive. After all, Republicans could not care less about facts. They have put all their faith in voter suppression drives, and none in the voters themselves.
A surreptitious recording of Republican Mitt Romney at a fundraising event last May in Boca Raton, Florida, was leaked to the media, and it was incendiary. Mitt was in his natural element, talking to a bunch of super-rich supporters who paid $50K per plate to get past the front door, and I have no doubt he really meant everything he said. After all, the event was nominally closed to the new media, and he was among his people. He had no reason to put on any airs for them.
At one point Romney make the astonishing statement that he considers 47% of the American electorate to be freeloaders and victims, and are dependent on the government for all their sustenance. 50 million Americans are, according to Romney, shiftless, lazy, and looking for nothing other than a handout. They feel they are "entitled" to have the government provide food, housing and medical care for them, and do absolutely nothing to fend for themselves or pay their own way. They take everything and give nothing in return. Frankly, I would like to get in on that gig.
The news media went absolutely berserk, as they should, and despite everything else going on in the world this was the big news story. The liberal media had a feeding frenzy, and there was an overabundance of red meat to go around. Even a number of more conservative media outlets and newspapers leveled some withering, merciless criticism on Romney, pointing out in no uncertain terms how totally off-base he was.
The Romney campaign went into major crisis mode, but no amount of whiplash-inducing spin could pull this mess out of the toilet. You could just see his campaign managers running around their office in a panic, bumping into each other, not knowing which forest fire to put out first. But the best was yet to come.
The Romney quote really making the rounds is something that you would never believe a candidate for national office would say. Romney said his "job" is "not to worry about those people" because they will vote for Obama no matter what. So, he is writing off nearly half of the electorate because they do not pay federal income tax, and Romney's tax-cut message would be lost on them.
It is certainly true that a lot of people pay no federal income tax. The tax code is structured in such a way that people of very low income, or senior citizens, or members of the armed forces do not have to pay federal income taxes. That doesn't mean they pay no tax at all. They pay all the other taxes everyone else pays - state tax, local tax, sales taxes, payroll taxes. As a matter of fact, middle and lower classes workers pay payroll taxes, and after you earn $106,800 you pay none at all.
Through all of this, Romney looks the same he always has: ridiculous, stupid, awkward, creepy and floundering around like a fish out of water. His performance in his quest for the White House as been a breathtaking series of gaffes and misstatements, from when he managed to insult the United Kingdom over London's Summer Olympics to writing off any chances of peace in the middle East. He has resolutely refused to turn over anything more than the minimum amount of information regarding his federal income taxes, something which has gained new urgency lately given his assertion that a lot of Americans are bums and leeches. I am convinced that he refuses to make public his tax returns because they will show that HE has not paid anywhere near his fair share of federal income taxes, and perhaps none at all for a number of years. I have four words for him, and I wish every news media outlet in the world would keep repeating them over and over to him: What are you hiding?
Even his phony, brittle wife Ann has reinforced all the negative impressions about her and her husband when, in an interview, the subject of his tax returns came up and she snarled in as imperious a tone as she could muster (and she's had a ton of practice) that "you people" (meaning the press and the American electorate) have gotten all the tax information that you're going to get, so be satisfied with that and STFU.
Still, no one is counting Romney and his campaign out because it doesn't matter to most of his Republican supporters what stupid, ill-advised and idiotic things he says or does, they will support him no matter what. Facts be damned, those people will vote for Romney even if he was proven to be a child molester who set a nursing home on fire while selling China white heroin to grade-schoolers. Republicans are never, ever encumbered by facts or reality. Their racist hatred of Barack Obama is stronger than any love of country or sympathy for their fellow citizens.
Presidential candidates have recovered from serious setbacks in their campaign before, but it's hard to see how Romney can run a credible, viable campaign from here on. It would be very interesting indeed to watch Romney's chances flame out and crumble, but it's impossible to overestimate the capacity of the American voter to see what they want to see, and ignore everything else. And above all, this election season is one where substance takes a distant back seat to style, and if your candidate says or does something really stupid, the best thing to do is double-down, dig your heels in, and deny, obfuscate, and deceive. After all, Republicans could not care less about facts. They have put all their faith in voter suppression drives, and none in the voters themselves.
Sunday, September 2, 2012
A Gathering Storm
It's Labor Day 2012 weekend, and tomorrow marks the traditional start of the presidential election campaign. There are 65 days till the election, and it's safe to say that all forms of media, especially television, will be flooded with diatribes from both sides, vilifying and demonizing the other, in their insane quest to pick up as many votes as possible, by any means.
This year, it's going to be different. We have something called the Citizens' United ruling in place. In a moment of stunning, breathtaking insanity, the Supreme Court decided that it's perfectly all right to inject a monstrously huge amount of money into an election system already choked and corrupted beyond recognition by dirty money. In a move that seems incredibly un-American, extremely wealthy individuals can pour money into what are called "super PACs", completely anonymously and shielded from discovery and in effect, buy the American democracy. Democracy, like justice, has always been available for purchase by the highest bidder, but this ruling makes it much, much easier for the election to be swayed by whichever side can line up more billionaire donors. If this doesn't go against everything on which this nation was founded, taking elections away from the common people and giving them over to the super-rich, nothing does.
Another stunning development is the diabolical, blatantly biased laws passed by state governments restricting and complicating the act of voting. Everything from selectively shortening early voting periods to ridiculous, unreasonable photo-ID requirements, and more, has been utilized by Republican-controlled state legislatures to make it more difficult for the poor and minority voters (whose choices skew very much toward Democratic candidates). Advocates of these Jim Crow 2.0 laws claim they are necessary to prevent "voter fraud," but it is a scorched-earth, Draconian solution to a very small problem. Studies have repeatedly shown over and over that voter fraud is an extremely rare occurrence, several orders of magnitude smaller than what would be needed to swing any important national or regional election. It's like using a neutron bomb to get rid of a fly. It's so obvious to everyone that these laws are not geared to prevent voter fraud, but instead to make it as hard as possible for people to vote, some of whom have been voting for decades. And in a democracy, isn't the whole point to make it easy for as many people as possible to vote? Voters are what make democracy what it is.
The Democrats are having their national convention in Charlotte, NC, this coming week. It will no doubt be nowhere near as freakish and insanely toxic as the recent Republican psycho-fest in Tampa. That convention was a hellish parade of the truly ugly and repulsive in American politics. From a snide diatribe by the repulsively obese Chris Christie, to Anne Romney's scripted-to-the-last-comma snooze-inducing attempt to "humanize" her extremely wooden, awkward and creepy husband, to the much-ballyhooed screed by veep candidate Paul "Lyin'" Ryan in which he STILL hasn't said anything interesting and valuable, the convention was one of the most repellent, distasteful things shown on television so far this year. Republicans seem to be making a Herculean effort to be the source of the most repulsive media of all time, between the convention and the primary debates.
Still, no one was prepared for the supernova of batshit-craziness when film icon and new poster boy for dementia Clint Eastwood did a stunningly bizarre piece of performance art by talking to a chair where an invisible Obama was seated. Almost universally panned by pundits and critics, it will go down as one of the weirdest, creepiest and saddest things ever. It did have one delightful effect - Mitt Romney also gave what was billed as the most important political speech of his whole life after Clint got finished embarrassing himself, but very few people were talking about that the next day. Everyone was reeling at how pathetic and sad Eastwood appeared on stage, in front of all those puckered, withered and desiccated faces of all those boring old white people at the convention.
This election will also be different in that it will most likely not be a war for the hearts and minds of independent voters, but more of a battle to see which side can get their bases the most riled up. The country has gotten so very polarized over the past few elections that the number of undecided voters has shrunk to a small sliver. I can't imagine there are many people who look at Obama and Romney and consider flipping a coin to make the choice easier. The vast majority of voters, myself included, have had their minds made up for many many months. The election can be held this coming Tuesday for all I care, I'm 100% ready to get it over with. There is absolutely nothing in this enormous universe which would make me switch my vote, so why do I have to put up with all the bullshit? The country is split down the middle, with very few swing votes, and the emphasis now is to get your core constituencies all cranked up and excited to cast their votes.
As is typical for paranoid-hysterics, Republican leaders drone ominously about how the very soul and existence of the United States of America is on the knife-edge, teetering at the abyss of destruction, and everything will surely be lost if Obama gets re-elected. Notably, a judge in Lubbock, TX opined that there will be "civil war" and a lot of civil disobedience if the election doesn't go their way. While those remarks can be easily dismissed as mentally-disturbed rantings of some inbred, cousin-marrying Texas hillbilly, it does illustrate the demented fear-mongering to which the Republicans are stooping this year. Always known as the party of fear, the Republicans are pulling out all the stops in their hell-bound campaign to frighten and terrify all their racist supporters, promising them that the Apocalypse Pizza Company will be delivering an extra-large to their front door if the black guy gets back into the White House. Desperate, fearful people do desperate things, and crazy, paranoid rednecks do really horrible, ugly, desperate things.
So, no matter who wins this election, pretty much 50% of the people in this country are going to be very, very angry and upset. Depending on how the Congressional elections go, we may be in line for a gridlocked, hyper-partisan government that will accomplish absolutely nothing. As the world enters a critical period on so many fronts - the environment, global economics, terrorism - having a paralyzed, divided superpower such as the USA will only make the world a much more dangerous place than it ever has been, or that it needs to be.
This year, it's going to be different. We have something called the Citizens' United ruling in place. In a moment of stunning, breathtaking insanity, the Supreme Court decided that it's perfectly all right to inject a monstrously huge amount of money into an election system already choked and corrupted beyond recognition by dirty money. In a move that seems incredibly un-American, extremely wealthy individuals can pour money into what are called "super PACs", completely anonymously and shielded from discovery and in effect, buy the American democracy. Democracy, like justice, has always been available for purchase by the highest bidder, but this ruling makes it much, much easier for the election to be swayed by whichever side can line up more billionaire donors. If this doesn't go against everything on which this nation was founded, taking elections away from the common people and giving them over to the super-rich, nothing does.
Another stunning development is the diabolical, blatantly biased laws passed by state governments restricting and complicating the act of voting. Everything from selectively shortening early voting periods to ridiculous, unreasonable photo-ID requirements, and more, has been utilized by Republican-controlled state legislatures to make it more difficult for the poor and minority voters (whose choices skew very much toward Democratic candidates). Advocates of these Jim Crow 2.0 laws claim they are necessary to prevent "voter fraud," but it is a scorched-earth, Draconian solution to a very small problem. Studies have repeatedly shown over and over that voter fraud is an extremely rare occurrence, several orders of magnitude smaller than what would be needed to swing any important national or regional election. It's like using a neutron bomb to get rid of a fly. It's so obvious to everyone that these laws are not geared to prevent voter fraud, but instead to make it as hard as possible for people to vote, some of whom have been voting for decades. And in a democracy, isn't the whole point to make it easy for as many people as possible to vote? Voters are what make democracy what it is.
The Democrats are having their national convention in Charlotte, NC, this coming week. It will no doubt be nowhere near as freakish and insanely toxic as the recent Republican psycho-fest in Tampa. That convention was a hellish parade of the truly ugly and repulsive in American politics. From a snide diatribe by the repulsively obese Chris Christie, to Anne Romney's scripted-to-the-last-comma snooze-inducing attempt to "humanize" her extremely wooden, awkward and creepy husband, to the much-ballyhooed screed by veep candidate Paul "Lyin'" Ryan in which he STILL hasn't said anything interesting and valuable, the convention was one of the most repellent, distasteful things shown on television so far this year. Republicans seem to be making a Herculean effort to be the source of the most repulsive media of all time, between the convention and the primary debates.
Still, no one was prepared for the supernova of batshit-craziness when film icon and new poster boy for dementia Clint Eastwood did a stunningly bizarre piece of performance art by talking to a chair where an invisible Obama was seated. Almost universally panned by pundits and critics, it will go down as one of the weirdest, creepiest and saddest things ever. It did have one delightful effect - Mitt Romney also gave what was billed as the most important political speech of his whole life after Clint got finished embarrassing himself, but very few people were talking about that the next day. Everyone was reeling at how pathetic and sad Eastwood appeared on stage, in front of all those puckered, withered and desiccated faces of all those boring old white people at the convention.
This election will also be different in that it will most likely not be a war for the hearts and minds of independent voters, but more of a battle to see which side can get their bases the most riled up. The country has gotten so very polarized over the past few elections that the number of undecided voters has shrunk to a small sliver. I can't imagine there are many people who look at Obama and Romney and consider flipping a coin to make the choice easier. The vast majority of voters, myself included, have had their minds made up for many many months. The election can be held this coming Tuesday for all I care, I'm 100% ready to get it over with. There is absolutely nothing in this enormous universe which would make me switch my vote, so why do I have to put up with all the bullshit? The country is split down the middle, with very few swing votes, and the emphasis now is to get your core constituencies all cranked up and excited to cast their votes.
As is typical for paranoid-hysterics, Republican leaders drone ominously about how the very soul and existence of the United States of America is on the knife-edge, teetering at the abyss of destruction, and everything will surely be lost if Obama gets re-elected. Notably, a judge in Lubbock, TX opined that there will be "civil war" and a lot of civil disobedience if the election doesn't go their way. While those remarks can be easily dismissed as mentally-disturbed rantings of some inbred, cousin-marrying Texas hillbilly, it does illustrate the demented fear-mongering to which the Republicans are stooping this year. Always known as the party of fear, the Republicans are pulling out all the stops in their hell-bound campaign to frighten and terrify all their racist supporters, promising them that the Apocalypse Pizza Company will be delivering an extra-large to their front door if the black guy gets back into the White House. Desperate, fearful people do desperate things, and crazy, paranoid rednecks do really horrible, ugly, desperate things.
So, no matter who wins this election, pretty much 50% of the people in this country are going to be very, very angry and upset. Depending on how the Congressional elections go, we may be in line for a gridlocked, hyper-partisan government that will accomplish absolutely nothing. As the world enters a critical period on so many fronts - the environment, global economics, terrorism - having a paralyzed, divided superpower such as the USA will only make the world a much more dangerous place than it ever has been, or that it needs to be.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Surf's Up
The month of September is at my doorstep, but the summer is still trying to suck every last drop of life blood out of us, like a crazed vampire who doesn't know when to stop draining its victim. Almost imperceptibly, the great wheel of the seasons is turning with tantalizing slowness, and the sun continues its languid, snail-like journey towards the south part of the sky. I leave my weekly aerobics class at approximately the same time, 6:50pm, and I can tell it's getting a tiny little bit darker each time. Used to be I would walk out of the gym into the bright sunlight of an early evening, but now the sun is hovering just above the western horizon, sinking a little more each day. The equinox is about three weeks away, and before long I will exit the gym to a sky devoid of sunlight..
I so love autumn because it has always been a time of reflection and contemplation, a time to consider what has been done so far this year, and plan for the long cold winter nights. Everything seems richer and more colorful; the air will soon carry a touch of chilliness in the morning, and there will be a fragrance that speaks of the harvest and coming-of-age, of promises fulfilled and lessons learned. The nighttime sky, always an indication of things to come, shows the Scorpion slinking low across the south toward the faintly glowing western horizon, and gallant, regal Pegasus, the celestial flying horse, making a powerful leap into the eastern sky, taking its rightful place of honor in the starry firmament.
In the coming months, the Scorpion will disappear in the west just as Orion the Hunter throws his leg up over the eastern mountains and hoists himself sideways into the sky, his faithful dog beside him and Lepus the celestial rabbit underneath him. The Scorpion and Orion are locked in a death pursuit, each chasing the other but never catching up. Scorpion wants to sting Orion with its glittering tail, and Orion wants to kill Scorpion with his club. They've been doing this for billions of years and will probably continue for billions more. Such is their fate, both of them hopelessly joined in titanic struggle that will never be resolved. Orion will rise higher in the southern sky until around the winter solstice, when Orion will take his rightful place as Lord of the Sky, glistening in the cold, deep winter night, Master of Heaven and Earth, surveying his kingdom. The Rabbit will still be underneath him, right above Columba the Dove. And very late at night, right around the winter solstice, you will spot the star Canopus, the harbinger of spring, skimming barely above the southern deserts and wildly twinkling like an over-caffeinated, multicolored strobe light.
I have been listening to a lot of music from the 1960s recently. XM satellite radio in my vehicle, along with the music channels on DirecTV, serves up an endless stream of great tunes from that amazing decade. Some of the music still sounds incredibly fresh and new, as if recorded just last week. The music and the vocal harmonies of a lot of the groups were startlingly complex and intricate. Looking back over four decades, I have a new appreciation for the achievements of bands like The Mamas and The Papas, Spanky and Our Gang and the glorious "Jersey Boy" pop of the Four Seasons. Even shallow contrivances like The Cowsills, a musical family whose members ranged from youngsters barely out of the toddler stage to the surprising youthful and hip (for the 60s) mother, recorded an amazing song called "The Rain The Park and Other Things." The Cowsills were a manufactured pop group, a precursor to the ubiquitous "boy bands" of the 80s and 90s, and their short-lived success degenerated into a series of acrimonious lawsuits which ended up tearing the family apart. Besides the reign of brash, revolutionary groups like The Beatles and the Jefferson Airplane, the 60s also saw the dawning of the singer-songwriter era with geniuses like Laura Nyro and Joni Mitchell, whose brilliance would continue into the new millennium.
Sure, there was a lot of crap music from that era, something that is inescapable no matter which decade you examine. The "bubblegum" music craze was particularly obnoxious, and unabashedly phony studio groups like "The Archies" and "The 1910 Fruitgum Company" sold millions of annoying records. Reflecting the cultural war at the time, a lot of people snapped up faux-patriotic potboilers like "The Ballad of the Green Berets" by SSgt. Barry Sadler (1966) - and on the other end - whiny, overwrought polemics like "Eve of Destruction" by Barry McGuire (1965). But all that was counterbalanced by Motown, the early Beatles, and the whole San Francisco psychedelic era, and those are the musical genres with real creativity, and real staying power.
Also central to the 60s sound were the Beach Boys, whose music and sophisticated vocal arrangements are still universally regarded as the best of the best. Brian Wilson's perfectly crafted masterpieces such as "Good Vibrations," "Wouldn't It Be Nice," and the shimmering, transcendent "Surf's Up" are unforgettable. The Boys, along with lesser lights such as Jan and Dean, created the entire California youth scene, an eternal playground full of fast cars, surfing and beautiful girls in bikinis frolicking on a golden beach in an endless summer (recently given a garish, playfully hallucinogenic update by Katy Perry in her "California Gurls" video). As someone just entering their teenage years, I was completely captivated by this perfect vision of a happy, carefree world drenched in lemon-yellow sunlight where you didn't have to work, and the biggest problem you had to worry about was catching the perfect wave. Growing up as I did in a gritty steel-mill town near Pittsburgh, life could get oppressively dull and dreary. The nearest body of water was the dirty Allegheny river which absent-mindedly meandered nearby, definitely not conducive to surfing. The "beach" (derisively called the "Polish Riviera") consisted of a tiny strip of land on the other side of the river made up of smooth, round river rock, which was incredibly uncomfortable to walk or lay on. Wintertime could be long, harsh and very depressing, often not seeing the sun for two weeks at a time, the trees devoid of green leaves, and the world locked in a frigid grip of icy, frozen ground and heavy, leaden skies. But gods help me, that was my home, and I loved it. Truth be told, sometimes I miss those incredibly dismal, cheerless winter days.
When conditions outside become difficult or unpleasant, either emotionally or because of the weather, the natural urge is to turn inward for solace. Whether it's 10 or 110 degrees outside, it's the same thing, two sides of the same coin. Memories are important stepping-stones back to a world with which you are intimately familiar, and that can be a very comforting thing. It's endlessly fascinating to me how a song or a piece of music can evoke such rich, detailed memories of who you were and what you were doing when you first heard it. I can remember all the words to songs I have not heard in 40 years, yet I can't remember what I did last week. Funny how such seemingly trivial things make such an enormous impression on you. Memories are funny, precious and remarkable milestones on the journey of your life.
I so love autumn because it has always been a time of reflection and contemplation, a time to consider what has been done so far this year, and plan for the long cold winter nights. Everything seems richer and more colorful; the air will soon carry a touch of chilliness in the morning, and there will be a fragrance that speaks of the harvest and coming-of-age, of promises fulfilled and lessons learned. The nighttime sky, always an indication of things to come, shows the Scorpion slinking low across the south toward the faintly glowing western horizon, and gallant, regal Pegasus, the celestial flying horse, making a powerful leap into the eastern sky, taking its rightful place of honor in the starry firmament.
In the coming months, the Scorpion will disappear in the west just as Orion the Hunter throws his leg up over the eastern mountains and hoists himself sideways into the sky, his faithful dog beside him and Lepus the celestial rabbit underneath him. The Scorpion and Orion are locked in a death pursuit, each chasing the other but never catching up. Scorpion wants to sting Orion with its glittering tail, and Orion wants to kill Scorpion with his club. They've been doing this for billions of years and will probably continue for billions more. Such is their fate, both of them hopelessly joined in titanic struggle that will never be resolved. Orion will rise higher in the southern sky until around the winter solstice, when Orion will take his rightful place as Lord of the Sky, glistening in the cold, deep winter night, Master of Heaven and Earth, surveying his kingdom. The Rabbit will still be underneath him, right above Columba the Dove. And very late at night, right around the winter solstice, you will spot the star Canopus, the harbinger of spring, skimming barely above the southern deserts and wildly twinkling like an over-caffeinated, multicolored strobe light.
I have been listening to a lot of music from the 1960s recently. XM satellite radio in my vehicle, along with the music channels on DirecTV, serves up an endless stream of great tunes from that amazing decade. Some of the music still sounds incredibly fresh and new, as if recorded just last week. The music and the vocal harmonies of a lot of the groups were startlingly complex and intricate. Looking back over four decades, I have a new appreciation for the achievements of bands like The Mamas and The Papas, Spanky and Our Gang and the glorious "Jersey Boy" pop of the Four Seasons. Even shallow contrivances like The Cowsills, a musical family whose members ranged from youngsters barely out of the toddler stage to the surprising youthful and hip (for the 60s) mother, recorded an amazing song called "The Rain The Park and Other Things." The Cowsills were a manufactured pop group, a precursor to the ubiquitous "boy bands" of the 80s and 90s, and their short-lived success degenerated into a series of acrimonious lawsuits which ended up tearing the family apart. Besides the reign of brash, revolutionary groups like The Beatles and the Jefferson Airplane, the 60s also saw the dawning of the singer-songwriter era with geniuses like Laura Nyro and Joni Mitchell, whose brilliance would continue into the new millennium.
Sure, there was a lot of crap music from that era, something that is inescapable no matter which decade you examine. The "bubblegum" music craze was particularly obnoxious, and unabashedly phony studio groups like "The Archies" and "The 1910 Fruitgum Company" sold millions of annoying records. Reflecting the cultural war at the time, a lot of people snapped up faux-patriotic potboilers like "The Ballad of the Green Berets" by SSgt. Barry Sadler (1966) - and on the other end - whiny, overwrought polemics like "Eve of Destruction" by Barry McGuire (1965). But all that was counterbalanced by Motown, the early Beatles, and the whole San Francisco psychedelic era, and those are the musical genres with real creativity, and real staying power.
Also central to the 60s sound were the Beach Boys, whose music and sophisticated vocal arrangements are still universally regarded as the best of the best. Brian Wilson's perfectly crafted masterpieces such as "Good Vibrations," "Wouldn't It Be Nice," and the shimmering, transcendent "Surf's Up" are unforgettable. The Boys, along with lesser lights such as Jan and Dean, created the entire California youth scene, an eternal playground full of fast cars, surfing and beautiful girls in bikinis frolicking on a golden beach in an endless summer (recently given a garish, playfully hallucinogenic update by Katy Perry in her "California Gurls" video). As someone just entering their teenage years, I was completely captivated by this perfect vision of a happy, carefree world drenched in lemon-yellow sunlight where you didn't have to work, and the biggest problem you had to worry about was catching the perfect wave. Growing up as I did in a gritty steel-mill town near Pittsburgh, life could get oppressively dull and dreary. The nearest body of water was the dirty Allegheny river which absent-mindedly meandered nearby, definitely not conducive to surfing. The "beach" (derisively called the "Polish Riviera") consisted of a tiny strip of land on the other side of the river made up of smooth, round river rock, which was incredibly uncomfortable to walk or lay on. Wintertime could be long, harsh and very depressing, often not seeing the sun for two weeks at a time, the trees devoid of green leaves, and the world locked in a frigid grip of icy, frozen ground and heavy, leaden skies. But gods help me, that was my home, and I loved it. Truth be told, sometimes I miss those incredibly dismal, cheerless winter days.
When conditions outside become difficult or unpleasant, either emotionally or because of the weather, the natural urge is to turn inward for solace. Whether it's 10 or 110 degrees outside, it's the same thing, two sides of the same coin. Memories are important stepping-stones back to a world with which you are intimately familiar, and that can be a very comforting thing. It's endlessly fascinating to me how a song or a piece of music can evoke such rich, detailed memories of who you were and what you were doing when you first heard it. I can remember all the words to songs I have not heard in 40 years, yet I can't remember what I did last week. Funny how such seemingly trivial things make such an enormous impression on you. Memories are funny, precious and remarkable milestones on the journey of your life.
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