The Quest Continues

Tags

brains, Christie, fundamentalists, GOP, high school, Huckabee, Politics, psychology, Women's issues

You’d think that I’d know pretty much all I need to know at my age.

I mean seriously folks, shouldn’t I just sit and chortle at all the younglings’ who are still running into things, unable to fathom that pace of life yet? Shouldn’t I know the BIG issues of life?

Why am I always surprised and puzzled?

Having just finished reading Joseph Campbell’s, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, I should get that we are all just playing out the story of humanity in infinite forms, no? Can’t I leave it at that?

NO, apparently I’m forced to admit at my refined age, that I may be just a tad, just a tiny bit, miniscule actually, ANAL.

Case in point.

Or in several, but in POINT now.

Michael Huckabee, once governor of Arkansas, a state lost between Noah’s ark and Kansas. Now our Huck as he is fondly called by many, was once upon a time (not a fairy tale) a preacher. A southern Baptist one, to be exact, and that means literally, literal, insofar as a fundamentalist can be literal, which is way a lot when they need to and way not all when it would be inconvenient to be so. Which makes him really a Christianist, one of those rather duplicitous individuals who sorta uses Jesus when needed and ignores him when not, although pretending to NEVER forget Jesus, i.e., sprinkling all talk with plenty of “thanks be to God” and Thank the Lord” .

So, Mikey as he is not fondly called, figured he would jump into the fray of the “war on women” being continuously waged by the GOP.

That that is clear to every human being save the GOP itself who continue to remain with head firmly inside butt is also clear.

And the trend has continued as we all know in 2012, 2013 and so on.

It is Republicans who are trying to restrict abortions and are, through phony laws, forcing PPH offices to close all over the country. Women are being denied reproductive care quite simply and that results in more women dying from reproductive disease, and more unwanted pregnancies, the EXACT OPPOSITE of what Republicans claim they are introducing such legislation for.

In pops the Huckster, who is starting to think that running for President might be a good thing, and off he goes with the mouth part:

“If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it,. . .”

So, old Mikey thinks that Democrats believe that women’s insatiable libido requires contraceptive care in the guise of Uncle Sugar?

Seriously, explain how he came to that conclusion, or is just simply the way dead-below-the-waist-Mike feels? Is his wife dragging him to bed every night and telling him to Viagra up or something? Is the old man tired of “gettin’ it up” and gettin’ going?

This after some dip wad in Virginia by the name of Black, who is running for Congress, suggests that there should probably be no laws against marital rape.

“How on earth you could validly get a conviction of a husband-wife rape when they’re living together, sleeping in the same bed, she’s in a nightie, and so forth, there’s no injury, there’s no separation or anything.”

Seriously, it’s just a he said, she said kinda thing, right? Boys will be boys. . . .or, I bet he’s the one in the nightie.

Are Republican men this utterly clueless. Is there no Republican woman around who can just tell them to SHUT THE F**K UP?

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Explain to me how any person can go to college for four years and become educated sufficiently to teach math, and still denies the truth of evolution?  How does a brain do that?

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By all accounts Chris Christie is a reasonably intelligent human being. I have learned that he was darned good at running for stuff in college and in organizing so that his “team” would win across the board in student elections. And we are most aware of his spectacular rise in New Jersey, a definitely blue state.

So, in looking forward to someday running for President, (and surely you know he’s always had that in his mind since he was 12 or so), wouldn’t you sorta know that thugs and others who did your dirty work and the people you intimidated all your life, would literally flood the plains of Jersey should they even SMELL a leak in the dike?

Is it just me or is this just the beginning of an avalanche of charges, and victims parading forth telling their story of how Christie thugs forced them to throw Grandma off the train? The Bridge and Hoboken are just the tip of the iceberg I suspect.

Why do people who don’t play by the rules always think nobody will find out?

Do the really believe in perfect crimes?

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Here’s one for ya.

I went to a typical high school. Maybe not so much as I thought.

A whole bunch of us started in kindergarten and graduated together. Over the years, cliques changed. Our group splintered into a good five groups or so. Some of us got hurt by being dumped. Some never aspired to group 1, probably most. We all dissed those below us, more or less. We gave what we got.

I’ve been to college, three times. I’ve worked for people and for myself. I’ve been in a ton of relationships, all of which obviously went sour for one reason or another, due to one thing or other, until the last one, which has lasted nearly 14 years. I’ve been screwed over by the best and worst of them, regarding all sorts of things. In that regard I am no different from any other human.

As my friend Jean said, all humans are flawed. We get to accept that about each other, and how our flaws blend enough to get along.

But, when I reconnected with high school classmates, I found this:

A friendliness that turned out to be all too superficial. Most of the lines remained drawn. A rather stunning realignment based on who agrees with who. Fundies gather together and chat like great friends when way back then, they never spoke and one would not be caught “dead” with the other. All the liberals now, however, were my friends back then. People I thought were smart turned out to be dumb, or as uninformed as a person could be and still walk. A whole slew are angry, very angry people, mostly those who stayed in the factory town that went belly up.  And although raised in a working class environment where the UAW was the norm in most households, most are conservative, hating folks, who blame unions, and the poor for being takers. And kids should be slapped around because “it was good enough for me”. They are “patriotic” as they define it, meaning they love “the troops” and the flag, but hate the President, and income redistribution, although surely they would benefit from that.

And I don’t get most of ’em. A few who were a year or two behind me or ahead, I get. They escaped the hate thing somehow. They are good people, who have worked hard, but avoided blaming those who have less for what they don’t have.

And the real point here, is that, all those people from college and work situations and relationships that didn’t do unto me as I think they should? I have long ago forgotten them and their transgressions because, hey, we are all flawed. But the angers from those old high-school slights still linger and still seem rawer than they should.  And I have a couple of those classmates who don’t participate in group discussions and I think they are  so much smarter than I. They are not wasting their time on stupid.

Which all goes to say that I delight a bit too much in telling old X and Y what utterly stupid people they became. Ain’t that funny? Or sad in a funny sort of way?

The first cut is the deepest. Thank you Rod Stewart for reminding me.

To Christie or Not, That May or May Not Be the Question

Tags

Chris Christie, Election 2016, Rand Paul, teabaggers, Ted Cruz

Well, another election down. I won’t bore you with rehashing the results. You probably know them all too well. McAuliffe wins in Virginia, Christie wins in New Jersey, New York City goes for the progressive, Detroit goes white, Alabama chooses the moderate Republican over the Tea.

One might take from this that the Tea Party had a bad night. Both in Virginia and in Alabama the tea party candidate was way way out there in Righteous land and both were defeated, in one case by a Democrat  whom nobody really liked (McAuliffe) and in the other by a more moderate version of conservatism.

Of course the Tea Numbskulls will not learn the RIGHT lesson from all this. Rather they are already grousing that Cuccinelli was in reality not really Right enough. And if they are saying that, well what can you expect? While there are grades of insanity no doubt, from mild to severe, insanity pretty much says it all doesn’t it? No matter the degree, one is not going to let a certified one babysit the kids or take your money to bank for deposit.

This is actually good news for the rest of the country who still holds on with all its might to the last shreds of sanity allowed one in this magnificent country of denial. As I always say, the crazier they are, the saner we look by comparison. By the way a huge huge thanks for Toronto and your own brand of crazy with his band of happy pipers, the illustrious still mayor, Rob Ford. You make America look good there pal.

Any the way, where does all this leave us?

Well, it seems to me that it leaves us chomping at the bit for the big old 2016! I means it is likely to be even more a hoot than 2012 was, and who can forget all the fun we had then? We had wonderful Michele with her big ole eyes and her “win” out of Iowa or was it the straw poll that she bought with lots of corn on the cob and music entertainment? And then there was Herm and his 999 and Ickbekistan? Who can forget that Perry forgot and made famous that lovely word, “OOPS”? Oh gosh, and there was Newt and his plastic hair wife, and zoos. And Willard, ahh, dear Willard and we had dogs on roofs, and 47%, and elevators for cars, and trees just the right size. Those were the days.

And yet, I smell similar fun coming up.

Even though old Rinsed Penis has abolished all those weekly debates, there will still be enough.

Let’s look at the contenders.

First we got Randy Paul. Randy has a bit of an issue with stealing other people’s work, as in plagiarism. Randy didn’t like the accusation when it came from Rachel Maddow, but well the rest of the lazy press when shown the pathway to success, started scrambling through Randy’s written chit, and pumping it into a plagiarism-finding site, and whoa, did they get lucky. Lots of speeches, lots of “editorials” in various newspapers, and even a good chunk from his book lifted from the Heritage Foundation, which publishes enough propaganda to choke an ox, having given up the word “think” in think tank. Nowadays Wikipedia probably does have more professional bonafides than it.

Randy, confronted with the avalanche of proof of his cheating, does the Anthony Weiner defense: there may be more of this “stuff” out there still, and tells us he will “restructure” his group of workers. This all suggests that it is staff in his office responsible which is interesting to note, since it does suggest that Randy never even wrote his own book.

But sadly this is not the first time Randy has told us that he may have a rather unique understand of ethics. Witness his gleeful explanation of how one can succeed in med school. Lie to other classmates, telling them that you have a copy of the test, which you provide freely, and letting them study for the wrong stuff, in the hopes that they will do badly and you will look better on the curve and score a better grade. All without having to know anything! Hurrah. What’s not to like about this? Oh cheating? No, Randy says, no it’s not cheating, just I guess free markets at work?

Throw in a little self-aggrandizement in the form of making yourself “board certified” by organizing your own Board of Ophthalmology, in which your wife is the Vice President and his father in law was Secretary and which operates out of a mail box. See, Randy didn’t want to take the recertification required by the state, so he just certified himself.

Now if all that leaves you a little queasy when it comes to Randy’s sense of ethics, just think of all the fun we are all gonna have come 2016? As a bonafide wanna be candidate for President, Randy is surely gonna face some fun questions from the other candidates and the press.

And then there is Teddy the Latin Cruz. Teddy is a dominionist, which means he and his daddy and others like them, (Sarah, dear girl, included) further warp and twist Genesis in the bible. In one of the creation stories God tells Adam that he has dominion over the earth. Well, Teddy takes that chit seriously, and intends to dominate it, as in Christian supremacy. That stuff about separation of church and state be damned. He is after all, as Daddy says, one of the Kings who is entitled to get the money, and the power, and rule. Meanwhile they will get rid of everyone who disagrees with a vengeance.

Teddy might also find it hard to live down his tentherism ties. Actually his 9th and 10th erism ties. Basically tentherisms contend that most all of the laws of the US are unconstitutional, since the assume power not directly given to the government by the Constitution. (read literal in the extreme). This is states rights talk, plain and simple.

Mike Lee, Senator from Utah, who showed Cruz how to win an election from a conservative Republican by running farther to the right of them, is a huge champion of this as well. Basically (all your poor hanger-on teabuzzards don’t read this lest you pass out), these guys want to repeal EVERY and I do mean every social safety net program ever invented such as social security, medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and on and on. Most government agencies would be dissolved such as the EPA and presumably things like the FDA, FAA, FCC, and so forth.

Well, then we get to Christopher Christie the big winner from Tuesday. That makes him the frontrunner to many. But of course, he has to get through Randy and Teddy, and God knows how many other loons such as Allen West, Sarah, well the mind boggles at the thought.

Christie has his own issues: an explosive temper that borders on bullying which apparently is fairly easy to set off. You know that  Randy and Teddy will be doin’ just that. And there is the fact that Willard Romney liked Christie and wanted to make him his VP, until his vetting team uncovered enough that that option was no longer viable. Now the Romney robot may have been a bit gun-shy give just how stupid Sarah turned out to be, but lordy, there are suggestions that Christie may play a little fast and loose with the government contracts and friends issue.

This may all be fairly small, but you can be sure that the field of loons the GOP is likely to field will go fast and furious in exploiting each and every alleged faux pas to its logical conclusion. And of course the red meat blogging community who is hell-bent for a REAL PATRIOT to be the candidate, well, they will again be doing the work for the regular press and feeding them every located skeleton found.

Which all, goes to say. . . .

It’s going to be a bumpy ride. Thank you Ms. Davis!

PS: Where big GOP bucks come in here is anybody’s guess at this point!

Look At That Again

Tags

anarchism, capitalism, Chris Christie, GOP, ideology, Politics, teabaggers, Wing nuts

Perhaps it’s the new year, and my intent to be a kinder gentler pundit. (Did you see how I slid in that word pundit, raising myself to the realm of Rachel and Ed and Lawrence? Well, you can’t blame an old girl for trying.

Anyway.

Gee that begs the question why my favorite form of prose is the stream of consciousness, just writing down whatever flops out of my over-active mind. Does it read as easily as it trips through my neurons?

ANYWAY.

It may be the nicer me that I’ve conjured from the depths of my often described cold-dead heart (by those who despise the things I say), but I’m not sure.

Not sure about what you ask?’

Why, that Chris Christie is seeming to start to thaw my rather unfavorable image that I have henceforth had of him.

I know, I know. You will say, “why sure, Sherry, he’s raggin’ on the GOP. What’s not to like?”

And I will say, “Yeah, I do enjoy that to be sure.”

But it seems more than that.

I get these flashes when I am watching him, that in some ways, he is EXACTLY what we need. He is just bombastic enough to get people’s attention. And he at least gets it that some things are NOT political, or shouldn’t be. And he’s not afraid to rant at his own party when they are politicizing that which shouldn’t be.

As opposed to John of Orange who is so afraid of his crazy caucus that he cancelled a vote on disaster relief that is already LONG OVERDUE, because he was scared that his idiot faction would vote against it, because they are inclined to only do with comes naturally, which is ACT STUPID.

Which is not to say that Chris Christie still espouses all the dumb Republican philosophies that I find both repugnant to economic stability and to common decency as regards the average Jane. But he at least realizes that the federal government has SOME purpose and disaster relief is sure one of them, as opposed to the Norquistian element which wants to just turn over the keys to the Capital to Stanley Morgan and Mobil Oil.

Which is to say, that you can’t get everything in one package, and Christie being a mighty big package, you are gonna get a lotta bad with some good. But when the good that he might bring is exactly the sort of thing that might move this desperately ineffective and “taking up oxygen for no good reason” Congress, well, it might be the bad tasting medicine we need.

I mean the man is not stark raving mad, and quite frankly, any Republican who can be so defined, is now someone to be embraced as at least a fellow human being. The rest of the GOP is so in the cesspool of crazy as to not be salvageable. I mean they ARE crazy. They are not posers nor grifters, they are simply top-spinning MAD. They cannot be allowed to continue to gin up the gaggle of gun-totin’ jackasses out there who have been bunkered and arsenalled up ready to re-enact Bunker Hill with live ammo.

So maybe I’m being seduced by his rhetoric. Maybe he is just saying the right things that will make his approval ratings soar and will position him for a run in 2016, even though the Right Wing glue sniffers hate his guts for being their latest version of RINO. I dunno. Maybe I’m coming down with the flu. Or maybe rabies. Or maybe I’m being practical.

Now I’m an ideologue of the first order. I don’t like practical politics, I simply endure it. I do. I make the best of what is at hand. I have enough time in the business of political watching that I know that you never get what you want, you get hopefully a tad more than 50% of it. And you live to fight another day.

But I’m still an ideologue who is quickly giving up on the idea of capitalism as a viable future way to conduct economic matters. I’m in short, becoming an anarchist, as best as I now understand the term. I don’t believe there is a way to regulate business to a degree that it doesn’t game the system eventually and control the government. As it does now. And thus we find ourselves in a mess where the people’s voices are being ignored in favor of whatever suits business.

But that’s another story.

One best left to another day, when I might know a bit more about what I’m talking about.

But this Christie thing. Well, I’m in pondering mode.

Tell me, have I lost my mind, or is there something to my madness?

Related articles

• Mr. Christie, you’d make a good third party (thefutureamerican.wordpress.com)
• Sorry, East Coast Republicans, but this is your party too (salon.com)
• Chris Christie Officially Becomes a Democrat (weeklyworldnews.com)
• Gov. Chris Christie Throws Boehner Under the Bus, Backs Over Him Repeatedly (pjmedia.com)
• Peter King may be leaving the GOP because of failure to vote on Sandy aid bill or something; Update: Christie rips Boehner, House GOP at presser (hotair.com)
• Christie hammers Boehner by name for Sandy funding delay (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)
• Damn You Congress For Making Gov. Christie Look Utterly Logical and Completely Admirable (blogs.villagevoice.com)