As the fair month of November slips quietly away, I look with a bit of dread on the rapidly-approaching holiday season. I know there will be lots of parties and dinners and gatherings to attend, and it will be very nice to spend time with all the wonderful people in my life, but a little bit of me is already starting to cringe at the orgy of greed and consumerism which is already rushing towards us.
Yesterday there was a story on the local news about some pathetic idiot who is camped out in front of a Best Buy store or something here, in anticipation of being the first one in the store when Black Friday hits. That would be four days later. Apparently this sad schmuck has nothing better to do than waste four days of his life on the opportunity to drop a bunch of money on some electronic gifts for his niece and nephew, which will probably be forgotten in a month or two. I'm not sure which is worse, this fool squatting on the doorstep of corporate America or the local news idiots publicizing him like he's some kind of retail warrior or something.
This year it seems more apparent than ever that Thanksgiving is becoming an afterthought, a secondary holiday whose main purpose is to mark the beginning of the REAL holiday - the start of the Xmas shopping season. This month I've heard more about Black Friday than about Thanksgiving itself, and that is really sad. Thanksgiving is the biggest secular holiday and the one with the most meaning. What could be more fitting and proper than to be thankful for all the good things in your life and to draw your friends and loved ones near to you and celebrate being together? Sharing a good meal, a glass or two of wine, and good conversation is to me a gift that no store-purchased bauble could match. And yet, people seem to be very willing to eschew the good things in life for the pursuit of the biggest bargain, or the lowest prices.
A lot of people will wage their assault on the local shopping mall with all the grim precision and painstaking detail of a major military operation. It is so unseemly and undignified to be such money-grubbing, shopping-crazed automatons - robots pre-programmed by a lifetime of carefully-honed and targeted commercials to go out and shop on command. The more money you spend, the more you love someone; that seems to be the take-away from all this. In the single-minded pursuit of this end, so much of what makes life worthwhile seems to drop away and get left behind in the glitter and the dust.
So this year, I'm going to do what I have been doing for the past 5 or 6 years - reject all the buy-or-die hysteria, push back on the annoying, intrusive and hyperactive sales pitches, and instead concentrate on the real reason we celebrate the season - the friendship of people we love and with whom we share more than just a parking space in a shopping center lot, the coming winter solstice, and soon afterward a new year and a new springtime, and another year full of promise and opportunity, sadness and joy, and more wonderful people and rabbits gracing my life and touching my heart.
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.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Election 2012 Wrap-Up
Election 2012 is now history, and what a historic night it was. Barack Obama was given four more years to continue his leadership and his efforts to repair the economy after the 2008-2009 collapse. We can look forward with great satisfaction for continued health care reform and one, maybe two, Supreme Court appointments, which is a huge, huge deal. The news media were all predicting that the presidential election would be a nail-biter clear into the next morning, but in fact the election was called for Obama shortly after 9pm. When Ohio was seen going to the president, it was all over. To no one's surprise, Florida is still undecided because it seems as if it's impossible for them to have an election without a lot of fuss and hoo-hah and delay. Florida is the Drama Queen of the nation.
A number of other regional races took on national significance, and a lot of them did go the right way. Elizabeth Warren, a very capable, intelligent and resourceful woman, took the Massachusetts Senate seat away from empty mannequin Scott Brown. Drooling, knuckle-dragging religious bigots Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, who gained national infamy with their astonishingly ignorant opinions on rape and abortion, went down in flames, and deservedly so.
In non-office related elections, three states - Maryland, Maine and Washington - approved marriage equality, and another state, Minnesota, turned down an initiative to ban it. All wonderful news, and milestones in what I believe is the inevitable march toward full marriage equality, something that absolutely should be a basic American right. Also the first openly gay Senator was named, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin. In Illinois, Tammy Duckworth ousted loathsome dirtbag Joe Walsh.
As always there were disappointments, and not surprisingly a lot were in Arizona. This benighted, ignorant state chose greasy, buck-toothed scam artist Jeff Flake for the Senate seat occupied by the flabby, flatulent Jon Kyl. Ancient, bloated media whore Joe Arpaio was reelected Maricopa country sheriff for the hundredth time, thanks to all the senile old fools in Surprise and Sun City, all the anti-immigrant bigots and literally millions of dollars which poured into Arpaio's campaign coffer from out-of-state right-wing PACs, who seem to see Arpaio as a conservative (read: racist) icon. Still undecided is the contest for new Congressional District 9, where I live, and I'm hoping Kyrsten Sinema will pull off a win over perennial Uncle Tom, Vernon Parker. I'm also hoping for Anne Kirkpatrick to win over payday-loan-pimp Jonathan Paton in District 1. And late today, Anne Kirkpatrick was declared victorious in her contest.
Also very much on the plus side is that AZ Proposition 204, which would have permanently extended the 1% sales tax, went down in flames with 65% of voters saying no. This tax was passed a couple of years ago on the promise that it was only to be a temporary increase, and greedy special interests in this state thought it would be easy to make permanent. They thought that people would go for anything that nominally was portrayed as helping school children, but voters in this state weren't snookered by this charade and rightfully told them to go pound salt. Also, Proposition 120 the "sovereignty" amendment, a ridiculously blatant and stupid attempt by the state legislature to take control of public lands, also went down very decisively. So, there was a little bit to be thankful for in this wretched excuse for a state.
There were some really funny things that happened last night. Apparently Fox News - Stupid News For Stupid People - was one of the first outlets to declare Obama the winner. One of their commentators, the execrable Karl Rove, went completely batshit crazy ON AIR, frenetically blathering about and trying to grasp any kind of straw, real or imagined, to deny the outcome in Ohio. He looked like a gigantic, bug-eyed catfish who was yanked out of the water and was gasping and thrashing around. Then, one of Fox's newsskanks trotted off stage and stumbled back into their "Decision Room" to confront the number-crunchers with the news that Karl Rove did not approve of their pronouncement. The number geeks practically told her to GTFO, because numbers, unlike everyone on Fox News, do not lie. Ohio was definitely Obama country.
But to me the most amazing and inspiring thing was that despite everything the Republicans tied to do to steal this election - lies, misinformation, voter suppression and intimidation, pathetic, un-American attempts to restrict poll hours or early voting times - everything they tried to do was to absolutely no avail. Most amazing were the American voters who stood in line for an extraordinarily, unbelievably long time (as long as seven hours in some cases) but would not be deterred by Republican skullduggery and dirty tricks. They were going to cast their ballots and would not be denied, and as a result, democracy itself would not be denied.
Political pundits are already furiously dissecting all of last night's happenings and assigning blame and credit as they see appropriate. In my opinion, the Republicans lost the presidential election for two reasons: 1) a pair of profoundly unattractive candidates at the top - Romney and Ryan; and 2) a party which has been co-opted and corrupted by right-wing extremists who made the party very unappealing to the more moderate American electorate. The Republicans thought this election was going to be a cakewalk - they just had to repeat the word "economy" over and over like a mantra and the voters would flock to them - but much to their dismay that did not happen.
Complicating matters for them was that Romney was such a repellent, off-putting candidate who was his own worst enemy. His infamous "47%" remarks kind of scuttled his candidacy at a crucial point, and his own chronic, incurable awkwardness and creepiness turned many voters off, even on a subconscious level. Scrawny, big-eared geek Paul Ryan did not really help much. It seems the Republicans have a really amazing talent in picking very unattractive, unappealing candidates for their elections. They did so in 2008 and thoughtfully repeated the same mistake in 2012, and for that I thank them very much.
Everyone, including me, was fretting about the unprecedented flood of anonymous, untraceable money that was poured into the process by the horrendous Citizens' United Supreme Court ruling, but much to my surprise, American voters - not known for being particularly discerning or resistant to idiotic campaign rhetoric - were not swayed by sham super-PACs with lofty, misleading names like "Americans For Prosperity" (because who in their right mind would be against prosperous Americans?) and "Club For Growth Action" (whatever the hell that means). Quite a few super-wealthy billionaires - casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, for one - dropped a huge chunk of change on Romney's campaign, and essentially threw their money down a rat hole. I wonder how much good that money could have done, donated to food banks or domestic violence shelters, instead of being utterly wasted on a political campaign.
By Anne Romney's own statement, she and her husband are through with politics. We can only hope we've seen that last of that corrosive, elitist, hatchet-faced old trollop. Initially her role in her husband's campaign was to "humanize" him to the voters and make him seem like a regular person. In the end, Anne Romney was the one who needed "humanized," because her presence and role in the campaign proved to be a major misfire. She needs to just throw on one of her pioneer smocks and go be a good little Mormon wifey. It's hard to humanize someone who lacks so very much in terms of basic humanity, and maybe her next dancing horse can do a little jig to make her feel better.
America dodged a huge bullet (more like a thermonuclear warhead) when Romney lost. I can barely imagine how unspeakably awful and horrible a Romney administration would be. Our nation would have become a weird, Frankenstein-like hybrid of theocracy and oligarchy, with government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich becoming the norm.
If I can be indulged for a little bit of tooting my own horn, I wrote in an entry on this blog called "This Just In: Time Marches On," dated almost a year ago November 15, 2011:
"My prediction is that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee and will go against Obama in the 2012 election....Obama will coast to his second term."
If you don't mind my saying... Nailed. It.
A number of other regional races took on national significance, and a lot of them did go the right way. Elizabeth Warren, a very capable, intelligent and resourceful woman, took the Massachusetts Senate seat away from empty mannequin Scott Brown. Drooling, knuckle-dragging religious bigots Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, who gained national infamy with their astonishingly ignorant opinions on rape and abortion, went down in flames, and deservedly so.
In non-office related elections, three states - Maryland, Maine and Washington - approved marriage equality, and another state, Minnesota, turned down an initiative to ban it. All wonderful news, and milestones in what I believe is the inevitable march toward full marriage equality, something that absolutely should be a basic American right. Also the first openly gay Senator was named, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin. In Illinois, Tammy Duckworth ousted loathsome dirtbag Joe Walsh.
As always there were disappointments, and not surprisingly a lot were in Arizona. This benighted, ignorant state chose greasy, buck-toothed scam artist Jeff Flake for the Senate seat occupied by the flabby, flatulent Jon Kyl. Ancient, bloated media whore Joe Arpaio was reelected Maricopa country sheriff for the hundredth time, thanks to all the senile old fools in Surprise and Sun City, all the anti-immigrant bigots and literally millions of dollars which poured into Arpaio's campaign coffer from out-of-state right-wing PACs, who seem to see Arpaio as a conservative (read: racist) icon. Still undecided is the contest for new Congressional District 9, where I live, and I'm hoping Kyrsten Sinema will pull off a win over perennial Uncle Tom, Vernon Parker. I'm also hoping for Anne Kirkpatrick to win over payday-loan-pimp Jonathan Paton in District 1. And late today, Anne Kirkpatrick was declared victorious in her contest.
Also very much on the plus side is that AZ Proposition 204, which would have permanently extended the 1% sales tax, went down in flames with 65% of voters saying no. This tax was passed a couple of years ago on the promise that it was only to be a temporary increase, and greedy special interests in this state thought it would be easy to make permanent. They thought that people would go for anything that nominally was portrayed as helping school children, but voters in this state weren't snookered by this charade and rightfully told them to go pound salt. Also, Proposition 120 the "sovereignty" amendment, a ridiculously blatant and stupid attempt by the state legislature to take control of public lands, also went down very decisively. So, there was a little bit to be thankful for in this wretched excuse for a state.
There were some really funny things that happened last night. Apparently Fox News - Stupid News For Stupid People - was one of the first outlets to declare Obama the winner. One of their commentators, the execrable Karl Rove, went completely batshit crazy ON AIR, frenetically blathering about and trying to grasp any kind of straw, real or imagined, to deny the outcome in Ohio. He looked like a gigantic, bug-eyed catfish who was yanked out of the water and was gasping and thrashing around. Then, one of Fox's newsskanks trotted off stage and stumbled back into their "Decision Room" to confront the number-crunchers with the news that Karl Rove did not approve of their pronouncement. The number geeks practically told her to GTFO, because numbers, unlike everyone on Fox News, do not lie. Ohio was definitely Obama country.
But to me the most amazing and inspiring thing was that despite everything the Republicans tied to do to steal this election - lies, misinformation, voter suppression and intimidation, pathetic, un-American attempts to restrict poll hours or early voting times - everything they tried to do was to absolutely no avail. Most amazing were the American voters who stood in line for an extraordinarily, unbelievably long time (as long as seven hours in some cases) but would not be deterred by Republican skullduggery and dirty tricks. They were going to cast their ballots and would not be denied, and as a result, democracy itself would not be denied.
Political pundits are already furiously dissecting all of last night's happenings and assigning blame and credit as they see appropriate. In my opinion, the Republicans lost the presidential election for two reasons: 1) a pair of profoundly unattractive candidates at the top - Romney and Ryan; and 2) a party which has been co-opted and corrupted by right-wing extremists who made the party very unappealing to the more moderate American electorate. The Republicans thought this election was going to be a cakewalk - they just had to repeat the word "economy" over and over like a mantra and the voters would flock to them - but much to their dismay that did not happen.
Complicating matters for them was that Romney was such a repellent, off-putting candidate who was his own worst enemy. His infamous "47%" remarks kind of scuttled his candidacy at a crucial point, and his own chronic, incurable awkwardness and creepiness turned many voters off, even on a subconscious level. Scrawny, big-eared geek Paul Ryan did not really help much. It seems the Republicans have a really amazing talent in picking very unattractive, unappealing candidates for their elections. They did so in 2008 and thoughtfully repeated the same mistake in 2012, and for that I thank them very much.
Everyone, including me, was fretting about the unprecedented flood of anonymous, untraceable money that was poured into the process by the horrendous Citizens' United Supreme Court ruling, but much to my surprise, American voters - not known for being particularly discerning or resistant to idiotic campaign rhetoric - were not swayed by sham super-PACs with lofty, misleading names like "Americans For Prosperity" (because who in their right mind would be against prosperous Americans?) and "Club For Growth Action" (whatever the hell that means). Quite a few super-wealthy billionaires - casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, for one - dropped a huge chunk of change on Romney's campaign, and essentially threw their money down a rat hole. I wonder how much good that money could have done, donated to food banks or domestic violence shelters, instead of being utterly wasted on a political campaign.
By Anne Romney's own statement, she and her husband are through with politics. We can only hope we've seen that last of that corrosive, elitist, hatchet-faced old trollop. Initially her role in her husband's campaign was to "humanize" him to the voters and make him seem like a regular person. In the end, Anne Romney was the one who needed "humanized," because her presence and role in the campaign proved to be a major misfire. She needs to just throw on one of her pioneer smocks and go be a good little Mormon wifey. It's hard to humanize someone who lacks so very much in terms of basic humanity, and maybe her next dancing horse can do a little jig to make her feel better.
America dodged a huge bullet (more like a thermonuclear warhead) when Romney lost. I can barely imagine how unspeakably awful and horrible a Romney administration would be. Our nation would have become a weird, Frankenstein-like hybrid of theocracy and oligarchy, with government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich becoming the norm.
If I can be indulged for a little bit of tooting my own horn, I wrote in an entry on this blog called "This Just In: Time Marches On," dated almost a year ago November 15, 2011:
"My prediction is that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee and will go against Obama in the 2012 election....Obama will coast to his second term."
If you don't mind my saying... Nailed. It.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Election Night Blog
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!
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, 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.
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