Thursday, May 31, 2012

Rapacity, Mediocrity...and Romney


Romney officially heads the Republican party and his handmaid, Trump, is trumpeting his success at making stupidity a made-in-America commodity.

We are slouching toward a slough of despond!

Yeah, I guess I'm mixing literary metaphors, but tough times call for tough measures.

Is there good news anywhere? No!

The most boring member of a bizarre band of brothers competing in a totally witless primary has, unthinkably, achieved stature as the leader of a party whose name conjures up a litany of Romney-inspired terms:

Money, absurdity, larceny, money, acrimony, tyranny, hegemony, villainy, money, gluttony, calumny, money, felony, cupidity,  mendacity and, maybe, above all, monotony.

The European economy is on the verge of collapse; Syria and Iran and Israel are lighting the fires of catastrophe; Islamic zealotry and Christian hypocrisy have the world by its short hairs and, into this potentially monumental conflagration, slouches a man with a name that rhymes with all that is wrong with this world. Romney!

It's all too much to bear.

Every day a new poll appears that shows this totally useless excuse for a paragon of virtue, is gaining on the good and sensible.

Every day we hear reports that  Rove, the giver of eight years of Georgie Porgie & Co., is readying his army of evil elves to bury sanity and even-handed justice under a pile of stinking cash that will keep us down and dirty forever.

The merry month of May is sinking under the weight of the prospect of a summer of no-good, lousy news. And I can't do a thing about it.

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Monday, May 7, 2012

Barf Bag Sunday


I watched Republican "strategist" Ed Gillespie holding forth this Sunday. He looked so sweetly sincere in his pity for President Obama's lack of a snowball's chance in hell to be returned to office in November, that I couldn't help admiring his brass. He delivered his malevolence without raising an epithet or an eyebrow.

This is the talent of the present day Goppers.  They have, through their belief they are the favored species, practiced and perfected the appearance  of infallibility while they spit out their Shinola.

You absolutely know they are lying, exaggerating and spinning when they lay down a memorized carpet of offensive barbs with a deftness that defies belief. Those of us with the benefit of functioning brains, but the drag weight of a sense of honor and  fair-play, are left in the dust, sputtering like Tin Lizzies. (Witness Rachel Maddow last week dealing with the supreme condescension of a Goppy activist on MTP.)

I couldn't believe the idiocy spouted on this past airing of ABC's This Week. Bay Buchanan is the quintessential narrow minded Irish biddy that Maeve Binchy evokes in her amazingly candid stories about the Gaelic psyche. Buchanan, like her brother, is so full of venom, I can feel it splashing on my face 10 feet from the TV set. 

And shame on Tavis Smiley for having to fault Obama for not making the world free of murder and mayhem concomitantly with his having to surmount the devastating effects of a bloody-minded opposition in his own government.

And can you imagine McCain defending his selection of Palin and then asking us to believe it is Obama whom "...history will view  with the scorn and disdain he deserves."?

Where does the gall come from and why is it so hard for liberals to ingest it and then disgorge it at will as Goppers can and do?

Oh, I can and do say mean things. I can and do rant and rave and be generally and insultingly dismissive of Gopper nonsense. But I find it almost impossible to dissemble with the artistic finesse of a Rove or Gillespie or that really creepy Castellanos. There definitely is something in the DNA of these critters.

With all the books coming out analyzing the Republican mindset,  I see I am not the only one who has noticed that there is something very wrong about conservatives this year.

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Thursday, May 3, 2012

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream



I am an art lover. I value and admire the results of an artist's ability to interpret life and emotions and events with mind, eye and color....or a camera....in ways that move us. The gifted have expressed themselves and found appreciation for their expression  since the beginning of time. And we applaud them.

People who are drawn to artistic works are deemed to have a sensitive - and, sometimes, a discriminating - taste for culture in all its many forms.

However, this appreciation and sensitivity appear to have reached a puzzling zenith with the following announcement.

"Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream" sold at Sotheby's in New York for $119.9 million on Wednesday night.The amount is a record for a work of art sold at auction. The version of "The Scream" sold is one of four painted between 1893 and 1910, and is one of the best-known images in modern art," according to CNN.

Think of it - $120 million! Even while I marvel (and choke) at the sum, I am aware that in terms of real, today, actual cash, hard money, this is considered a pittance by those who have real, today, actual cash, hard money. And while I recognize this, it continues to be a reality difficult to accept for someone who once earned 50 cents an hour babysitting.

My view has always been that having money and being successful is something to work toward - even strive for - and then enjoy both when achievement is reached. 

But what, and how much, represents "achievement?"

I've never thought I was the "pinko, commie liberal" that is the accepted epithet for those of us who think it is ugly to tear down a perfectly good house to build a bigger one....one that has a god damned elevator for cars; or wears a $1,000 tee shirt when there is even one child in the universe who has no food.

No, the Romneys, and the The Scream purchaser, are not responsible for supporting the world. They need not wear sackcloth and ashes because they are financially fortunate.  But I would think they would be responsible for more conspicuous support and even funding of the less well endowed instead of marathon buying and owning and investing.

Since the Munch purchaser is anonymous, we can't know his or her proclivities for sharing, but from what I've seen of the Romney clan, their giving appears to be concentrated around supporting their church. This is not so much noble as a reaffirmation of their personal beliefs which have limited benefit to humanity.

Considering the sad, catastrophically unequal distribution of wealth  in  the world, The Scream, certainly one of the ugliest paintings ever produced, seems an appropriate icon for our world today where "frivolous" expenditure of one's discretionary income is not to be criticized on pain of being called a pinko, commie, bleeding heart liberal.

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