Aw Shucks and BeJesus!

Tags

George W. Bush, GOP, Louis Gohmert, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Muslim Brotherhood, NRA, religious right, social media

 

 

 

Doncha know that I am just bummed. I hear ex-pretence-of-a-president, George W. Bush, Dubya fun, dubya stupid to his friends, ain’t a goin’ to the big to-doin’s called the GOP convention.

Nope, he don’t wanna take the spot light off the dim bulb personality of Willard.

Given that Georgie was one of the more incurious types ever to sit his behind in the oval office, my guess is that it is just too boring for him to bother with.

But then again, no doubt the black sheep son is also somewhat concerned about his legacy. And associating with idiots probably would not help. Speaking of legacy, when I heard that the Texas stooge (not Gohmert or Perry), had written a book about EKO-NOM-IKS, I nearly lost my lunch in guffaws (Willard uses this term for laughing). I mean you gotta be kidding me!

Seriously. The man is a mental midget.

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There is a really excellent post by Frank Bruni on the NYTimes editorial page about the super-noodle head, Michele Bachmann. Bruni examines her strange variety of “Christianity”, you know the one I mean. The one favored by the likes of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, and other hate-mongering types who use their sick interpretation of the bible to justify suppression of other people. Take a look. As always take a look at the comments.

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Ya know,  the NRA may tell me that I can’t talk about gun control because it is “politicizing” a tragedy. Which is dumb of course, but the crazy right thinks it’s exactly the proper time to blame it all on liberals. Colorado is Gods vengeance for turning away from Him. Sick huh? Which makes our favorite hate monger, Bryan Fischer’s remarks all the more backward:

It’s been interesting to me in talking to liberals, and I’m sure you’ve had this same experience, the conclusion I’ve come to is that they cannot be reasoned with because logic means nothing to them, facts mean nothing to them, history means nothing to them, reason means nothing to them. They just have these very strong feelings and the strength of those feelings in their minds is all they need to validate the positions they take. So I’ve just come to the conclusion that liberals cannot be reasoned with they can only be defeated.

Now that will make your head spin won’t it?

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Willard appears to be taking a page from the Gingrich (where the hell did he go?) playbook. Remember when ole Nootie Patootie was buying Twitter followers? Well it seems our boy Willard has done the same thing. His campaign of course denies it, but his numbers went up dramatically on one day, and they don’t match the retweets and tweets offered on that day. Estimates are that Willard’s twitter account contains only about 26% real people. For an unreal guy, hey that’s pretty good don’t ya think?

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Well one thing you don’t wanna do. Louis Gohmert Republican idiot from Texas, don’t take no “chit” from nobody, and that includes one John S. McCain–a man not known to take criticism well. Senator McCain had the audacity to criticize Gohmert and Bachmann and others who decided based on no evidence to attack a Hillary Clinton aide. McCain came to her defense.

Well, Gohmert didn’t care for that, and while appearing on the Dennis Miller (he has a show?) show, called McCain “numb nuts” and that McCain was probably under the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood.

I do believe that we are drawing near to a time when it can fairly be said that there are no minds at all in the GOP only facsimiles.

I bid adieu, adios, and good day to you all.

GOHMERT: Well, it’s obvious that John McCain didn’t even read the letter because of what he said in accusing Michele and us of making these horrible accusations. There were five letters and there were many things that are stated that are facts in each letter. And I wish some of these numb nuts would go out and read the letter before they make these horrible allegations about the horrible accusations we’re making. But we also know that John McCain himself had said back in the early stages of stuff going on in Egypt that he was, in his words, “unalterably opposed to helping the Muslim Brotherhood.” Well, obviously the unalterable person has been altered, so he is okay with it now.

Yeah, well now Louis, you have about as much sense as Gomer Pyle on a bad day, so I’d button that lip before Johnny comes and lays you out on the House floor for impersonating a Representative. And don’t land on no cactus when you fall there bud.

 

Related articles

• McCain calls accusations against Clinton aide ‘sinister’ – Christian Science Monitor (csmonitor.com)
• ‘Gentlemen’s Club’ Gangs Up on Bachmann (americanthinker.com)
• Louie Gohmert: ‘You See Me Hugging Muslims Around The World’ (huffingtonpost.com)
• Michele Bachmann’s McCarthyite Crusade Against Huma Abedin And Other Muslims (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Top Ten Reasons Texas Has George W. Bush On Ineligible To Vote List | Addicting Info (easyjjgrand3.newsvine.com)

 

Dear, Johnny Depp Awaits You in the Bedroom

Tags

atheists, environment, fundamentalism, George W. Bush, going green, Johnny Depp, life in the meadow, Michel Foucault, Politics, Presidents, writing

A statement like that can cause a woman my age to go into immediate cardiac arrest. I gasped, turned to my beloved Contrarian with all the love I could muster in my eyes, and gushed, “Darling, this is the Best late Christmas present ever!”

I tripped across  one dog and stepped on at least one cat tail as I launched myself across the room, eyes shining brightly at the bedroom door.

I burst in, my eyes like eagles, searching the environs. “Come out, come out, where ever you are, ” I teased.

“What are you talking about?” the Contrarian grunted. “I taped David Letterman. Depp is a guest. Since Stewart’ still off on vacation, I thought we could watch it for our bedtime fare.”

Welcome to my life. My fantasy universe collapsed before my tear-laden eyes, and I mumbled, “well of course, I was just making a joke.” I pushed my tired feet under the covers, pulled the blankets up tight against my chin, and closed my eyes, to let the fantasy play out for a few more seconds.

Sigh.

***

What’s in a name? No, I’m not getting all Shakespearean on ya. Are you named after someone? Cappy over at Writer’s Block is, and she tells you all about it. Also her penchant for naming as yet unborn children.

I do that for pets. I name them in advance. My next two dogs will be Frieda and Diego. After the Mexican painters. I saw the movie. What a love affair. Passionate people hurt each other, but their love is dramatic.  I like to name in love affairs. Or something else. We have Kate and Spencer (Hepburn and Tracy) and Calvin and Hobbes (okay that isn’t a love affair, except sorta it is). Our cats. They don’t exactly act like their counterparts. That is the downside.

***

This next one requires some real thought. First impressions may be wrong. Does the computer enhance, or make for better writing than the old-fashioned ink and quill? pencil? ink pen? typewriter? The eraser was vilified as making for sloppy writing, easy to “correct.” How about white-out? Trickier question than you might have thought. American Scientist has a titillating review on the subject. The book in question is called: A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers and the Digital Revolution.

It sounds like a quirky but quite interesting little book.

***

If Murr Brewster hasn’t come across your radar yet, you may want to take a look at her blog. She has a slice of environmental reporting to do today, done in her rather inimitable style. How do you fare in the “go green” revolution? Like Murr, up and down, depends.

***

What frustrates me with “some” atheists is that their arguments are based on fundamentalist interpretations of the bible, which we (most of us) agree are utterly wrong. Yet these atheists seem either unwilling or unable to see that there is a better/clearer/more intellectually sound way of reading scripture.

Tim Bulkeley writes a great little piece over at The Bible and Interpretation that lays the plague of the neo-Atheists at the feet of the fundamentally unbiblical fundamentalist. I agree. See if you do. Thanks for the H/T from James McGrath at Exploring our Matrix.

***

My thought is that Dubya might not want to take his book tour to London. Not after the scathing and terribly accurate review Eliot Weinberger gives it. An excerpt will suffice to whet your whistle:

In the late 1960s, George Bush Jr was at Yale, branding the asses of pledges to the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity with a hot coathanger. Michel Foucault was at the Societé française de philosophie, considering the question, ‘What is an author?’ The two, needless to say, never met.

***

***

We’re having fried chicken, mashed taters and gravy and peas. I like peas. I even like the ones in cans. Like when I was a kid. They are like two different vegetables. Peas from the freezer and peas from the can. It’s one of those foods I need to revisit now and again, like that bright orange french dressing by Wishbone. Nostalgia they call it.

I’m a good wife. I cook up good grub. Even if Johnny Depp wasn’t in my bedroom.

The Post With Three Titles

Tags

bureaucracy, George W. Bush, Politics, Sarah Palin, VA, Veterans

Title #1

“Meet My Brother in a Jar”

Oh George, we had two blissful, blessed years with your mouth shut, and there ya go, and spoil it. Hawking a book, and spewing such ignorant crap. If you wanted history to treat you more kindly, this was not the way.

I have not, and will not read the book. I did not watch the interviews, though one gets a fair amount of their content on cable news and from the MSM.

The following are the gems, so it seems to me, showing conclusively, that G. Dubya Bushie is still clueless and proud of it.

The shocking revelation that mama Barba Bush decided it was of some importance to preserve her miscarried foetus in a jar and to show it to young Dubya tells us that Dubya didn’t acquire his insanity solely on his own. Baba must be some piece of work.

If that don’t creep you out immediately, well, I don’t know what will. Surely he claims that said experience forever shaped his attitude toward abortion and so forth. Hmmm, more likely it seared your tiny conscience with images that scared the poop out of ya, and forever made you feel all icky around dead things. ‘Splains your avoidance of Vietnam. Too bad sending young men to die didn’t register.

It apparently didn’t make him feel any compassion and/or empathy toward anyone’s pain either. He seemed eager to talk about waterboarding, and when asked why  he felt it was okay, his response was swift and akin to a child who has made a perfect pooh in the toity–“because the lawyers said it was legal!” He looked at Matt with such self-satisfaction at getting the answer right, that one can only assume his “handlers” had drilled that answer into his poor head a thousand times.

This comes in contradiction to his claim to “not watching any TV” but spending time on the Internets reading alternatively the WSJ and the bible. Apparently the bible reading, never elicited any questions of morality or “what would Jesus do?” as to waterboarding and other forms of “enhanced interrogation.”

Lastly, Georgie tells us that the lowest point in his presidency was when Kanye West called him a racist. Matt squeaked quietly, “not Katrina?” “not no WMD’s?” I don’t know if he tried to clean it up, the point is, his knee jerk response was a personal insult being the lowest point in his eight years at the helm of the nation.

I was prepared to view this man with some sympathy, knowing as I did how he was manipulated by powers much smarter than himself. But, no, George is the evil SOB we had come to see him as.

#2 “I’d Be in It to Win It”

As things shape up so far, it appears that we are gonna have Sarah around with lots of hot and funny sound bites for a full two years. She’s not going to waste any time learning about issues, she’s just gonna run off her mouth with “shakin’ things up” kinda talk.

A couple of days ago, she promised to ‘splain to us about the economy, especially Bernanke’s plans to buy up a lot of treasury bills. Sarah of course knows only about her Saks bill, but no matter, she plunged right in.

She started off by talking to us real people by telling us that “we all know how supermarket prices have skyrocketed.”

Problem is, they haven’t, food prices have gone on only 0.6%, a really really low figure. When this was pointed out to her by a writer for the WSJ, she castigated the guy for not reading his own publication, citing a WSJ article as proof that she was right.

Except that Sarah didn’t bother to READ the article, which said that so far prices hadn’t risen, but they may be poised to begin. They didn’t.

So for all her smart alacky retorts, she is still wrong. None of this will be absorbed by her brain-dead followers however, for they only listen to her smack down, never the truth.

But the one that literally makes me fall over in laughter is an excerpt from a speech she gave in PA. In it, she pondered whether she would run in 2012. She noted she would have to “see the lay of the land, the landscape you know,” she mused. And further, “I wouldn’t be in it, ya know, just to shake things up, just to debate the issues of our day–I’d be in it to win it!”

Ya see, our Sarah, has no command nor intends to acquire any command of the issues. She is there to win it for the glory and prestige of winning. Of being the winner! Of living in the big White House, with servants and AirForce One! Lordy, what a piece of work that woman is.

#3 An FBI Swat Team Nearly Descended on the Meadow

It took all my fortitude, all my patience, all my tightly held mind to keep from screaming into the phone–“DO YOU PEOPLE NOT WORRY ABOUT SOMEBODY SHOWING UP AT YOUR FRONT DESK WITH A DAMN GUN?”

I knew if I did, the FBI would be notified, and we’d be gettin’ a visit. So I held my tongue. Nay I glued it to the roof of my mouth.

Why you ask?

Have you ever in your life tried to work your way through the bureaucracy of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT: to wit: the VETERANS ADMINISTRATION?

I have, and I have the scars and the nightmares to prove it.

Simply put, I wanted to move the Contrarian’s primary care from Iowa City, to a satellite here in Cedar Rapids. They invite us to do that. A week and half later, I was no closer, and had talked to some seven different people, each of which contradicted the one before, and sent me in a circular pattern that exhausted my fuel and threatened to crash my brain.

It came down to “we can’t make an appointment until the file is transferred” by one office and “we can’t transfer the file until you make the appointment with them” from the other. It’s a no-win. Finally one poor woman made the call for me, and secured an appointment.

It is truly amazing that more VA Hospitals aren’t attacked by crazed people. After all, there are a ton of Vets with PTSD and other mental illnesses that are service related. The Contrarian tells the story of the guy who in frustration went to his truck, returned with a chain saw and sawed the front desk in half. He did time, but I bet he was satisfied!

Well, I seem to have worked out another build up of high anxiety and F R U S T R A T I O N. Have a good one now.

Related Articles

• Why Dubya is wrong to bloviate on torture (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
• The WSJ Reporter Who Was Blasted By Sarah Palin Responds (businessinsider.com)
• Dubya: Worst moment; Kanye West on TV saying George didnt care about black people (politics.ie)
• Sarah Palin Shreds WSJ Reporter For Not Being Able To Read His Own Paper (businessinsider.com)
• The Great Wall Of Sarah (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
• WSJ Reporter Sudeep Reddy: “This Palin woman has her facts wrong”…..Sarah Palin: “I got them from YOUR newspaper” (minx.cc)

I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together, NOT

Tags

Bushisms, George W. Bush

Ap Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, file

Any trip around the blogosphere for the last several days will turn up all manner of end of year lists. Said lists are from every conceivable forum from entertainment, sports, politics and, well, anything that anybody can make a list about. I have read a few, those that captured my imagination in some way. Lists of the 10 best, 10 worst, predictions of last year examined, predictions for next year expounded. So, when I ran across this one, at the Huff Po, I couldn’t resist copying it in its entirety for your  pleasure. Please be sure to hop over to Huff Po on a regular basis, where you can always get the best news on politics, sports and entertainment. It’s a full service site! This particular post was picked up from the AP and we offer a t/h to them for this.

_ “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.” _ September 2000, explaining his energy policies at an event in Michigan.

_ “Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?” _ January 2000, during a campaign event in South Carolina.

_ “They misunderestimated the compassion of our country. I think they misunderestimated the will and determination of the commander in chief, too.” _ Sept. 26, 2001, in Langley, Va. Bush was referring to the terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.

_ “There’s no doubt in my mind, not one doubt in my mind, that we will fail.” _ Oct. 4, 2001, in Washington. Bush was remarking on a back-to-work plan after the terrorist attacks.

_ “It would be a mistake for the United States Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of that chamber.” _ April 10, 2002, at the White House, as Bush urged Senate passage of a broad ban on cloning.

_ “I want to thank the dozens of welfare-to-work stories, the actual examples of people who made the firm and solemn commitment to work hard to embetter themselves.” _ April 18, 2002, at the White House.

“There’s an old saying in Tennessee _ I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee _ that says, fool me once, shame on _ shame on you. Fool me _ you can’t get fooled again.” _ Sept. 17, 2002, in Nashville, Tenn.

_ “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” _ Aug. 5, 2004, at the signing ceremony for a defense spending bill.

_ “Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB/GYNs aren’t able to practice their love with women all across this country.” _ Sept. 6, 2004, at a rally in Poplar Bluff, Mo.

_ “Our most abundant energy source is coal. We have enough coal to last for 250 years, yet coal also prevents an environmental challenge.” _ April 20, 2005, in Washington.

_ “We look forward to hearing your vision, so we can more better do our job.” _ Sept. 20, 2005, in Gulfport, Miss.

_ “I can’t wait to join you in the joy of welcoming neighbors back into neighborhoods, and small businesses up and running, and cutting those ribbons that somebody is creating new jobs.” _ Sept. 5, 2005, when Bush met with residents of Poplarville, Miss., in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

_ “It was not always a given that the United States and America would have a close relationship. After all, 60 years we were at war 60 years ago we were at war.” _ June 29, 2006, at the White House, where Bush met with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

_ “Make no mistake about it, I understand how tough it is, sir. I talk to families who die.” _ Dec. 7, 2006, in a joint appearance with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

_ “These are big achievements for this country, and the people of Bulgaria ought to be proud of the achievements that they have achieved.” _ June 11, 2007, in Sofia, Bulgaria.

_ “Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for your introduction. Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit.” _ September 2007, in Sydney, Australia, where Bush was attending an APEC summit.

_ “Thank you, Your Holiness. Awesome speech.” April 16, 2008, at a ceremony welcoming Pope Benedict XVI to the White House.

_ “The fact that they purchased the machine meant somebody had to make the machine. And when somebody makes a machine, it means there’s jobs at the machine-making place.” _ May 27, 2008, in Mesa, Ariz.

_ “And they have no disregard for human life.” _ July 15, 2008, at the White House. Bush was referring to enemy fighters in Afghanistan.

_ “I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office.” _ June 26, 2008, during a Rose Garden news briefing.

_ “Throughout our history, the words of the Declaration have inspired immigrants from around the world to set sail to our shores. These immigrants have helped transform 13 small colonies into a great and growing nation of more than 300 people.” _ July 4, 2008 in Virginia.

_ “The people in Louisiana must know that all across our country there’s a lot of prayer _ prayer for those whose lives have been turned upside down. And I’m one of them. It’s good to come down here.” _ Sept. 3, 2008, at an emergency operations center in Baton Rouge, La., after Hurricane Gustav hit the Gulf Coast.

_ “This thaw _ took a while to thaw, it’s going to take a while to unthaw.” Oct. 20, 2008, in Alexandria, La., as he discussed the economy and frozen credit markets.

I mean, we all can’t wait until this horrid man is booted out of town in a mere 17 days, give or take a few hours/minutes/seconds, but gosh the comic relief will be sorely missed too. Never has one man given so much to the cause of comedy that one George W. Bush. What a legacy! I would love to be a fly on the wall in the home of George Senior and Babs. What moaning must be heard as these two suffer the embarrassment of having birthed such a dolt.

The Bush team is in full court press these days, attempting to create a list of accomplishments that their boy can stand beside. Trouble is, the creation just makes matters worse. Some efforts are being made to assert that our Dubya was not the numskull we all know him to be. They claim that the Texas Tongue-Tied Tough actually wasn’t led around by the nose by Cheney and other neo-cons. Well, okay, I’ll bite.

If that is so, then I guess we can lay all the failures at his doorstep then huh? No more blaming it on Cheney, Rummy, Condi and all the gang? Are ya sure you want to go there Georgie?

Short Takes on the Day 10/13/08

Tags

George W. Bush, John McCain, Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin, terrorists, vanilla

Desperate times call for desperate measures. So the McCain campaign is coming out with more “economic” fixesfor America. These are touted as being aimed at the middle class, that group that McCain pretty much ignored until, well, he needed their vote. Trouble is, his new plan is fraught with all the same problems as his previous ones: they have little to do with helping the average Joe Sixpack. What to do, what to do? This campaign is floundering and I think getting advice from a Ouija board now.

Tread quietly folks, we are entering the hospital room of one GW Bush. He is sedated, but you can smile and he will respond. Our boy idiot, doesn’t think he had a thing to do with ANYTHING that went wrong in Amirika, but he sure is glad he had himself at the helm to steer us poor folks through the murky waters of all these disasters. Yes indeed, with all those fine folks like Dick and Condi, and Rummy to help him and us out, well gosh, we would just be in a durn pickle if it hadn’t been for him. Laura regrets that flowers have arrived in such truckloads that she must refuse any more, so send your donations to the GWB Memorial for Brain injured NUT Heads. Next stop: The Twilight Zone.

Having just done a piece in which I cited the unfavorables of McCain, I’m happy to report that new ones are out, and they are worse than those I stated. McCain’s fav/unfav are now at a paltry +6, while Palin’s are an even worse +4. Obama’s have improved to a +24. You can read all about it at Glenn Greenwald‘s  blog from the Salon. Please check out this link, as there are a huge number of other internals that make is very very clear that Palin continues to drag the McCain campaign downward literally by the day. Just a teaser: the rate at which people think that one campaign is negative versus the other is huge, something not seen in either 2000 or 2004, if you can believe it.

Shannyn Moore  gives us her take as an Alaskan, to the revelations of the Troopergate report. She alleges that the McCain spin machine has been at work overtime to make black white and so forth. I wonder if Sarah will have a chance at re-election in Alaska whenever that might occur. One begins to doubt that anyone who has brought such attention to the State in such an unfavorable way would stand a chance.

I know I posted this a good while ago, and it lurks somewhere in these archives, but in case you missed it, here again is a recipe for making your own vanilla. Given its price, we all can use it. It’s way cheaper to make than buy I tell ya. It doesn’t get any simpler, and if you bake a lot, as I do, this is a real money saver. Even places to buy the beans from in bulk, and help in defining the different varieties of beans.

Anyone who comes here regularly, knows I love the American Prospect magazine. Their articles are simply well done. I know I am beating a dead horse in a sense, but they have a fine article on how McCain has destroyed his own brand. His dismissive claims that he “takes care of veterans” and other such nonsense, as “I know how to do, I’ll get it done” without more, have worn paper thin, especially when laid alongside his new propensity to win at any cost. Honorable politics have been discarded, because John knows that we need John, and we are going to get John even if John has to shove John down our throats with force.

Need more evidence that the McCain machine is missing a wheel and is off to schizophrenic arguments? Now it’s Michelle Obama’s “ties” to terrorists. Once Johnny said that spouses were out of bounds, now it seems, anything that might work will be tried. Check out this utter piece of drivel from The Anonymous Liberal if you are unconvinced that McCain’s campaign needs anti-psychotic drugs at this time.