To Love Or Not to Love: Dat Be Da Question

Tags

Ann Romney, Bain Capital, Chris Christie, convention, Election 2012, GOP, Mitt Romney, racism

 

 

Okays here. Ya gotcher choice heres. You can have yer warm and fuzzy or you can has your tough streets. It don’t make me no matter whichs one you chooses.

The party of old white wrinkled up dudes with their trophy wimmen of the Stepford variety is being generous. You know what I mean?

There is nice Annie with her red dress on, telling you that Mittens is just squeezably squishy soft and cuddly, or you can have yer bloated bully with his wise guy crackin’ ways, telling you that, well, RESPECT is better than all that love junk.

Choice is yers, as I say.

Much like the party itself, the message was coming in two different directions. Not a good beginning.

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I picked this up from Moe over at Whatever Works. This is simply unbelievable. A Puerto Rican Delegate was introduced to speak yesterday at the convention and was literally screamed down with chanting of “USA”. Rinsed Penis had to step in and actually beg the delegates to show her common respect. And they think they will pick up Latino votes? I doubt it. Good grief, these people are simply appalling.

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Steven Benen at The Maddow Blog has a rather scathing and well-deserved critique of the Christie speech. Not only was it bizarre, it seemed to focus mostly on Christie and then talked about courage when if you know anything about Willard, you know courage is not what he is about, not even in business was he a risk taker.

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If you think the Puerto Rican incident was isolated, think again. Another two delegates was forcibly removed from the convention floor after throwing peanuts at a black camerawoman working for CNN, shouting “this is how we feed animals.”

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This cartoon from Squatlo Rant was just too funny not to include:

Can you just feel the inclusive love?

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Matt Taibbi has a great story about Willard and Bain. It is one of the more ironic stories of this election cycle.  How a man campaigns on reducing the debt of the country when it was the manner in which he made his fortune. He never risked his own money. Be borrowed it from others and plunged companies deep into debt, then told them who they had to fire and how they had to cut in order to pay off the debt he saddled them with, all the while collecting massive fees for doing so.

You see, in reality Willard has spent his life being a high-handed con artist and he automatically thinks that he can continue to con the American people.

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Aww, lucky us. It seems the GOP is pulling ads in New Mexico against Heinrich given that he’s pulling ahead and in Missouri for obvious reasons as well. They are putting money into North Dakota where things are unexpectedly not going well. Senate contests may have also tightened up in Ohio and Florida forcing them to put more money in them as well. It seems that the GOP message is not making the electorate feel too happy. And that is a good thing.  And Dan Quayle’s son, who claimed that President Obama was the “worst president ever” was defeated in his primary. Ahhh, so sweet.

Well, I’ve walked, swam and shopped. Now it’s time to cook. So be good, and if you can manage a smile, give one to someone you don’t know.

Related articles

• Maine GOP delegates walk out of convention, plan to boycott (democraticunderground.com)
• Dan Quayle: Republican Party “Is A Minority Party” (dekerivers.wordpress.com)
• You Just Can’t Take the Tea Party Anywhere: More Successful GOP Outreach to the Latino Community (mikethemadbiologist.com)
• The Republican Convention was a badly managed Circus with a Klan-like mob mentality (freakoutnation.com)

 

It’s All in How You Look at It

Tags

Ann Romney, GOP nuts, Humor, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, North Korea, NRA, nuclear weapons, Second Amendment, sexism, Wisconsin, Women's issues

On the one hand, we can breathe a sigh of relief that the North Koreans remind us more of a group of Keystone Kops than they do a serious nuclear threat.

Li’l Kim Jr. seems about as silly as Li’l Kim Sr.

Both employ the world’s most awful barber, and both look like munchkins from the Wizard of Oz.

But there is a human side to all this too.

How would you like to be the group of “scientists” who Li’l Kim will call to his throne to ” ‘splain exactly how it was you made me look like a fool in front of the rest of the world?”

I mean, Gulag time in North Korea must be rather unpleasant given that most North Koreans would welcome transfer to the old Russian Gulag as a step up in living standards.

The GOP acted like a dog with a new bone, and since it’s been so long since they had a bone of any kind, they gnawed the hell out of it.

First of all, Ms. Rosen has zero connection to the Obama re-election campaign. She is a paid pundit for CNN and lobbyist for a whole array of companies.

Second, what we said here yesterday.

But the GOP will beat the heck out of this until it no longer resembles anything that anyone can even remember any more. When you are that short on actual policy, well, that’s what ya gotta do.

Back in Wisconsin, the GOP is busy making mischief in the upcoming primary for a Democratic candidate to replace the Koch-backed Scott Walker.

It seems to them a good idea to create “temporary Democrats” from their own ranks to “enter” the Democratic primary and run against real Democrats.

Why they think that is smart, moral, logical, or American I do not know.

But then I never claimed to understand the mush that passes for Republican brains these days. And given the scary stuff we see from them, I don’t think I’m going to start any time soon.

Is this what they assume is a wise use of tax dollars? Running faux candidates? Do they actually have any real policies that help people? I mean people in the sense of real working folks instead of the people in the sense that Willard means when he says, “corporations are people too my friend!” ?

Well, never let it be said in AmeriKA that elections can be bought! No sirreee!

Remember in AmeriKA we say, “any boy, err (politically correct correction) child, can grow up to be president.”

Yes they can.

As long as daddy was the president of a car company, and you made millions as a venture capitalist and you married a rich girl.  Not much more than your average kid has growing up.

Nope, not much more.

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Yesterday we learned that Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, saved a woman in a burning building. All manner of humor on Twitter then ensued. My favorite?

Chris Christie raced into a burning bakery and saved a pan of cinnamon buns.

I am mean aren’t I?

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Speaking of corporations.

Yes, I think this says it.

Which reminds me that Connecticut is gonna end the death penalty in that state.

For people who place such an emphasis on protecting life, I expect the TeaNutz are ecstatic.

Ya think?

Oh yeah, logic, logic, logic. They missed it at the brain deli. Should have labeled it pink slime. Then they might have dug in.

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It’s good to know that high-powered business men no longer are sexists. I know that’s the case when I read about Roger Ailes remarks at a talk he was giving to journalist students the other day. He was referring to Soledad O’Brien, journalist for CNN. (my paraphrase)

She’s that girl that’s named after a prison.

Yeah, I guess that was really funny Roger, and so appropriate for JOURNALISM students, you freakin’ idiot.

 I know little guy. I feel the same way.

I’m praying that old Newtie sticks around a while longer.

What with bouncing a $500 check, and selling his donor list to raise some cash, the poor guy must be staying at Best Westerns now.

No?

Oh, he and Callista are still using the private jet? And still demanding security? And she requires two assistants still? And one dresses in a rabbit suit to promote her book at all times? Wow.

Are we really sure that they are NOT on a book tour instead of running for office?

And we hear Newt said that he wants a UN resolution that every person on the planet should have a gun. For protection ya know.

He said that at the NRA, “love your gun, and hate that Kenyan President” fest just yesterday.

Newtster just wants a bit of extra cash to flow his way, even if it is stuck on the end of a bayonet–the latest in home security. Damn that Russian caviar is sooo expensive.

You do not want me to get started on the NRA and that LaPierre poop jackass, idiot, hate-mongering, death applauding, single good reason to maintain a death penalty, miserable grifter, president of the Guns R Us fanatic brigade. No you do not.

 

 

 

Who Does Speak for Me?

Tags

Ann Romney, Hilary Rosen, Women's issues

It was expected.

The firestorm about Hilary Rosen’s comments regarding Ann Romney.

She said nothing that was not true, she just said it inelegantly.

We all are used to other people speaking for us. Our parents did it, our teachers, or pastors, our spouses.

But truly it is the province of politicians to claim to do so.

Do you have any idea how many times I have come close to putting my foot through the TV screen when John Boehner deigned to tell me what I as  part of the “American people” want, expect, hate, refuse to accept?

It can only get worse when Bill O’Reilly tells me what I as “one of the folks” thinks about the price of hogs or the new Start Treaty.

The fact is, no woman may,  by that fact alone, can speak for me. I am too different even when we might share any number of characteristics. Having a uterus is not our connection, nor is having a husband, nor children, nor any of a host of other items we share or have shared.

Everyone sooner or later figures out that nobody, no matter how much they love you, spend years with you, or even study you intensely for science’s sake will ever really KNOW you. Nobody gets inside your skin. Nobody shares the pain, joy, fear, anger and on and on. Nobody. NO BODY. It’s the nature of being.

At best we get approximations. We share some of the same problems and concerns. But we have well more that we don’t share. And those influence how we think and what we need and desire as much as what we do share.

Ann Romney chose to be a stay-at-home-mom. Right there, she establishes a difference with tons of other women. She had a choice. Plenty don’t. She had enormous funds of money to help her out. She could have nannies and housekeepers and all sorts of support personnel to help her, whether she chose to avail herself of them or not. Again, another choice.

She was married, she had no independent career, she had no money worries. All these things separate her and join her in myriad ways with women around the country, but she cannot speak for any of them.

Most women don’t have the luxury of Ann’s life. Some wouldn’t want it if they could. Others would give up much to have it. She can no more relate to them and the pressures in their lives than Willard can relate to his gardener.

The best any of us can do is empathize. We can imagine how it MIGHT be to walk in someone else’s shoes. We can conclude that our life has been easier, more rich in opportunity, and we can thus feel compassion for those who have lived a rougher, more tenuous existence.

Rosen was simply saying that Ann Romney can’t know what it is like to worry about a sick child all the while trying to participate in a meaningful way in a board meeting. She cannot know what it is like to have to miss another school event because that second job is essential if the gas bill is to be paid. She cannot know what it is like to come home dog tired from being on your feet all day and have to try to put together a decent meal on a shoestring and then wash a load of clothes, check homework, listen to the woes of her elderly mother on the phone for an hour, and fall exhausted into bed.

I can’t know what that would be like either.

When Willard says that his wife talks to women around the country and “they are worried about jobs, and gas prices”, he is trivializing women and their lives. He is lumping us all together in some bloc of voters, and speaking for us.

President Obama got it right when he said that women are not some group. Like men, women are individuals, albeit with sometimes similar concerns, but sometimes not. Surely ultra conservative women don’t agree with being in the same group with liberal progressive women.

HUMANS are individual masses of contradictions, life experiences, opportunities taken and missed, choices, and lack of choices. We generally speaking want to be fed and clothed and housed and we want to have meaningful things to do, and we want to have access to decent education and we want decent health care. We generally want that for our kids too. The best way to get those things is as varied as there are stars in the sky.

So, stop all the faked shock and all that crap because Rosen said something the wrong way. She was perfectly right in her overall statement, she just said it badly.

And that’s my rant about that.