GOP voters decided in the primary that they’d prefer a feeb to a thief, but the party apparatchiks were appalled at their choice of the dingbat Maes — a mental midget, serial liar and astoundingly inept “businessman” who equates bicycles with blue-helmeted, black-helicoptered One World Gummint — over Scott McLobbyist, who had been the anointed front-runner until he got caught with someone else’s words under his byline and tried to brazen it out, like a shoplifter snagged with a hot Blu-Ray player stuffed up under his shirt. “Who me?” Yeah, you, pal. Out y’go.
So now they’re trying to get Maes to bail from the gubernatorial race before today’s 5 p.m. deadline for ballot certification so they can appoint a candidate with more computing power than a 1982 Osborne Executive.
Never happen, says state Sen. Dave Scheisskopf (R-The Crazy).
“You won’t see Dan backing down, I know that,” Scheisskopf told our local cage-liner. Let’s hope not. Watching John Hickenlooper kick the mortal shit out of this clown is liable to be the highlight of my fall election season.
It's not music that soothes the savage breast, it's pasta and vino.
Maybe it wasn’t such a horrible speech after all. I was cranky (having just shredded my right leg in a boneheaded trail mishap) and hungry (Herself was working late so I didn’t have dinner on the table pre-speech). After getting a meal and a few drams of Spanish vino into my system, I felt more kindly toward the prez and his little chitty-chat with the nation.
The recipe, pasta with salsa crudo and green beans, is from Martha Rose Shulman. Run it past the cranky-pants in your family and see if it doesn’t work wonders. I made mine with homegrown Portuguese beans and tomatoes from the gardens of two generous friends.
This is not to say, mind you, that I comprehend Obama’s fetish of continually extending olive branches to the Repugs only to watch them snatch them from his hand, toss them to the floor and piss on them.
Nor am I satisfied by his fondness for glittering generalities (“Our troops are the steel in our ship of state. And though our nation may be traveling through rough waters, they give us confidence that our course is true, and that beyond the predawn darkness, better days lie ahead.”).
And while I’m delighted to hear he wants to at least cut back on croaking our fellow Americans abroad and get cranking on the domestic economy instead, I’m still waiting to hear any details of how he proposes “to shore up the foundation of our own prosperity.” How many of us wonder whether the next paycheck we get will be the last? Just ’cause you’re paranoid, etc., et al., and so on and so forth.
And then there are the midterms. The more I watch the Obama “machine” in operation, the more I’m convinced these guys think they can take a page from the Repug playbook and blow off a sizable chunk of their supporters without consequences at the ballot box. The Repugs punk the Bible-thumpers every election year, and the Donks think they can do likewise to the lefty-loonies.
It’s a dangerous game. Sure, moving center-right to woo the independents and the handful of Repugs who aren’t yet completely unhinged may pick up a couple of loose votes. And it’s true that like the Bible-thumpers, lefty-loonies are not likely to hold their noses and switch their allegiance to the other side.
But a bunch of us, disillusioned once again, might just stay home on Election Day. And that’s really bad news, because the GOP’s whackjob base always turns out with a will, like a bunch of frat boys gleefully piling out of a van to beat up a longhair, nigra or queer.
Shit, now I’m cranky again, and I don’t feel like cooking. Happily, I still have some wine.
• Literary addendum: I almost forgot — one of the reasons I started writing this post was a recollection of Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here.” Red Sinclair certainly thought it could, and anyone who read the book will recognize many of its characters hamming it up on today’s stage.
The prez didn’t score any points here in Dog Country with tonight’s Oval Office address. More later after we gargle a little tonsil polish to take the taste of bullshit out of our mouths.
"Yo, America, baby ... lookin' good, honey. Say, did I tell you? I'm taking back the civil-rights movement for right-wing honky boneheads. Yeah, it makes me horny, too. But I wish you'd wear that Lady Liberty getup I got for you at the adult bookstore. I know, I know — it was slightly used. 'Pre-owned,' the guy said. But it was cheap, and you know we can't add to the deficit."
“Let me count this day, Lord, as the beginning of a new and more vigorous life, as the beginning of a crusade for complete morality and the domination of the Christian church throughout the land. Dear Lord, thy work is but begun! We shall yet make these United States a moral nation!”
And Glenn Beck, courtesy of (who else?) Glenn Beck:
“We are 12 hours away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America. And it has nothing to do with this city or politics. It has everything to do with God Almighty.”
The Gantry soliloquy comes at the end of the book. Let’s hope Beck’s tale is likewise coming to a close.
Remember Capt. Michael Clauer, the Army Reserve soldier who lost his $300,000 home over an $800 debt while stationed in Iraq? He’s getting it back, thanks in part to a Mother Jones story.
As MoJo’s Nick Baumann notes: “If folks from the homeowners association had bothered to knock on May Clauer’s door, they might have avoided all this — the legal fees, the negative press attention, and the (surely large) settlement costs. But they didn’t, and they paid the price. Fred Rogers would be ashamed.”
A swift kick in the wallet pocket is too good for these swine. How about a little time in the stocks, too? If the debts pile up and their houses get seized and sold while they’re hanging around in the town square, well, perhaps they can find new homes somewhere — say, in the Army, in Afghanistan.
Mad Blog Media 