He's Got his Panties in a Twist

Perhaps I missed something in a story I just read on Huffington Post where "my" (SIGH) governor, Bob  McDonnell, is running around like a goose in a windstorm because Virginia's credit rating is going to be in the tank.


I recall he stated some months back that he didn't see any point in raising the debt ceiling. A kind of "let 'em default" attitude which seems to have changed now that it is apparent Virginia will suffer.


McDonnell (or is it McConnell?....I can't ever remember anything about him except his cute and tidy little pompadour)...is a proud grad of Falwell's Liberty U. That should tell you all you need to know about his qualifications for anything.


He  and his AG,  Cuccinelli (who calls himself "Cooch") - are the Mutt and Jeff of Virginia politics. Both have attempted to carve out a national image, but they are dull blades, indeed.


As I was falling asleep last night, some commentator was remarking about how the GOP thought they had a winner with McDonnell and gave him the honor of presenting the Republican response after Obama's State of the Union address. 

He and the State Assembly House were all gussied up....with a liberal sprinkling of "types"....you know, black, brown, Oriental, young, old, civilian and military, male, female. It looked like a stage set for a propaganda commercial. Oh, right. That's what it was. 

Unfortunately for him, the boost didn't result in a demand for his brand . He is a drab little man with nothing to say.


If he hasn't distinguished himself, his attorney general has. "Cooch" is recognized far and wide as a horse's ass. He has fought "Obamacare" and climate change and he is anti-gay and anti anything that smacks of progress or humanity. 

But he outdid himself by trying to cover up the left breast of the Roman goddess who is on the Virginia state seal.

Where do these people come from? Do they spring whole from the hole in Zeus's head? 

-30-

The Hound or the Fox or the Skunk?

Smug and unctuous. Those are Eric Cantor's two expressions.


I first thought he simply was Boehner's dogsbody since I never saw a photograph of the orangeman without this smarmy little terrier glued to his hip. But it is apparent that he is not supporting  his leader, he is snapping up scraps from the table.....smiling all the while.


This whole debt ceiling thing is starting to appear more like a peeling  plaster ceiling piling on the panicky GOP. However, Cantor's plastic expression reveals that one way or another he will be top dog.


Capitalizing on Boehner's unrepublican reasonableness, Cantor looks like he is going to succeed in wresting the low ground from the party and come out of this briar patch looking like Br'er Rabbit and leaving the Speaker looking like Bugs Bunny.

In the larger scheme of things, maybe his ambition is irrelevant. And maybe Boehner will be able to survive just by refusing to engage in a peeing contest with a skunk.  

-30-

You Live and Then You Don't

Death is life's greatest mystery.

Check that! Life is life's greatest mystery. The end of it is just another part of it.

I'm always a little bemused, and sometimes amused, by the myriad ways people react to it. It's certainly not an event that is generally welcomed but, on the other hand, it's hardly surprising except, sometimes, when the timing and the circumstances are awful.

I was still awake Friday night when Betty Ford's demise was announced. Andrea Mitchell appeared on air looking devastated and haggard and revealed the "sad" news.

Holy Nellie, Andrea....she was 93 years old! and I am sure you haven't been spending so much time in her company that her absence has left a hole  in your life. 

Maybe it's a function of my great age that I find her departure evokes just a little nostalgia for the '70s (ugh!) and the acknowledgement that she made a number of useful contributions to society, but I found it hardly devastating news. 

However, maybe that's what Andrea is paid to do. Be devastated on cue. Not much of a leap since she and her husband almost always look mournful.

One reaction to death  I found less amusing and more revolting was Rush Limbo's statement that liberals wouldn't have cared about Caylee's fate if she had still been in the womb. Of course not, you dumb ass. She wouldn't have been a person.  She wouldn't have known what it was to laugh and cry and do. People wouldn't have seen her and held her and loved her. Absolutely no loss to her or anyone else.

When I started life as a journalist I was given the job of editing the birth and death announcements for the paper. After a few months of total boredom, I asked my editor if we couldn't change the hed on it to Arrivals and Departures. 

I guess my views haven't changed that much.

-30-

Finding Fun Where I Can

 Does anyone besides me recall a time when it was a rarity to find an error in a book or a newspaper? It just didn't happen.....much.


Nowadays, - even with magical spell checking abilities -  it seems to happen all the time. Either those who deal in words are getting careless, or they are less well-educated or there is just so much more verbiage floating around, not only on paper but sent into the ether, that it overwhelms human capacity to handle with care.


I usually enjoy finding some of the errors - such as those found in directions for a product that is supplied by a manufacturer in China or Japan.


Small and gentle amusements, these. But amusing nonetheless.


Today I found a bonus in a review published in the Daily Beast discussing Frank Schaeffer's new book - Sex, Mom and God.

While the title of it indicates it may tell me much more than I want to know about his father, sex and fundamentalist crazies, I did so enjoy reading what some truly clueless person typed, and even more fun was imagining the perplexity of that person in trying to figure out what it was that was being said, and interpreting it according to his or her fund of information. Herewith is the paragraph.

“Who was Mom as she might have been if part of her brain had not been crippled by her missionary parents’ indoctrination of her, just as the bones of the feet of little girls in China were once deformed by food-finding?” he wonders.


Thank you Daily Beast proofreaders. I am so pleased you didn't find that before I did.

Hell, forget proofreaders; how about a fact checker?

-30- 

The 'Rime' of the Political Pundit

Do pundits ever apologize for proffering predictions that don't pan out?

I don't think so. Or at least I don't recall any. Not surprising, considering that knowledgeable sounding  opinions falleth like rain from the sky...and runneth into the sewers where most of them belong.

These political nabobs should have to wear their pronouncements around their necks for several days after their guesses have not materialized as the punishment provided in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner .

I am hoping so much criticism of Obama will light a fire under complacent voters. I would like to think that all the negativity coming from Progressives is intended to worry the lazy liberals and blot out the apathy of the sometimes-voter. We need all the bodies warmed up, armed and ready. Armed with good information, that is.

There is no one in the current lineup that worries me. Well, that's a lie....they all are worrisome in that they are all either God driven or ego driven or just plain wrong-headed. What gives me pause is that I never believed  Georgie Porgie stood a chance, and even though he didn't win, he got enough idiots to vote for him that the GOP godfathers could use the supremely unsupreme Supremes to  pull his fat from the fire.

However, what I've seen of Huntsman is concerning. He looks good, he sounds good and he is a new flavor. He could be trouble. I hope the media are committed to searching for truth, not looking to fall in love.

Thank goodness Keith will be back by Monday....this Monday, Current TV. And he will have David Shuster, a bulldog reporter who has similar integrity and great energy.

And away we go......................

-30-

23 Sons And She Named them All Dave (Seuss)

The most adamant and the most frightening and offensively determined Right-to-Lifer at the GOP debate in New Hampshire last night was Michelle Bachmann, who established her bona fides with dispatch.

She told the cheering audience that in addition to giving birth to five children, she fostered 23 others. In case you  missed it the first time, she said it at least once, maybe twice, again. She obviously considers it a badge of honor. And I guess it is if you consider most of us normal women are lucky if we live through the raising of our own. Yes,sir, she deserves props...for something. Maybe a very big house and nerves of steel.


In my view, there wouldn't be much of a  need for anyone to take in 23 foster children if unfortunate women, who have been blessed with little but a fertile womb, were allowed dominion over their bodies. 

Google provides the information that she sheltered as many as four teenagers at one time. What altruism. I've had two in the house at one time and could barely live through the noise and the laundry.


Of course, since she didn't adopt these children there was a bonus to giving them houseroom. Minnesota pays foster parents about $25 a day per teen, plus a clothing allowance. 


Close to $1,000 a week would be a very welcome addition to any household. But surely she refused to accept payment since keeping alive all eggs that have encountered a sperm, and cutting money from  federal and state budgets represent her almost manically stated raison d'etre.

Primal Instincts Stink

I don't like to admit it but I suppose there are some L(l)iberals who have hate issues about anyone or anything that is different. (All mine are with Conservatives and religious Fundamentalists and, therefore, completely justified!)

Those wayward few of us may not have shed all the prejudices left over from earlier, narrower-minded generations that pitted themselves against the unknown and "foreign" because these represented potential danger.

But even these throwbacks don't evidence the soul-searing hatred that seems to emanate primarily from C(c)onservative flavors.

An acquaintance, whose mother and father were old country Irish, recently displayed a photograph of his 1960s wedding. His lovely wife has a slightly "different" aspect - meaning she does not look classically Irish. Shortly after the ceremony he recalled that his mother asked the bride's mother, who looks very much like her, "What nationality are you people, anyway?"

I can visualize the expression on her face as she asked this excessively offensive question because I am now both a resident of a southern state and an avid consumer of political news.  I see this expression often on:

• The elderly woman who has run a local greasy spoon here in Scottsville,  Virginia since before segregation ended and she still resents having to serve "coloreds."

• Bloviating politicians who represent southern and "Heartland" districts, particularly rural areas. (The name given to those Midwestern States that are so entrenched in insular and parochial values always amuses me. It seems such an oxymoron.) 

• Pillars of society in all the U.S. Gulf States who discuss the "problem" of immigrants in a manner reserved for discussions of roaches and maggots.

• Texas schoolboard officials who have taken on the responsibility to see that all U.S. public school textbooks hew the Christian line.

• Ministers who profess to be Christian but  who want to kill Muslims and burn the Koran.

I suppose when you consider mankind is only a  million years out of caves, the atavistic responses (that identify anyone different as dangerous) are bound to linger. Maybe in another million years it will be bred out of us.

Or maybe not.