Republican

American Politics Makes Me Feel Stabby


Jockey Retro Briefs

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And puts me in the mood to rant and if I could, slap some people upside their bloated with nonsense heads.

Weinergate leaves me near to a tongue-tied rage. What the fuck? How can tweeting your, as my husband put it “Nothing to be all that proud of,” crotch shot to your entire feed by accident because you are an idiot who is cheating on his wife with star-struck groupies young enough to be your daughters and then lying about it for a week be morphed into a teary girly photo-op apology and justification for hanging onto your job?

And why are liberals, progressives and Independents who are too wise to fall for Republican garbage, defending your sorry ass?

Jon Stewart summed it up best – after he mocked the representative from New York without mercy – that if guilty, he had to resign. He delivered it in a “you’re dead to me” tone that fairly sums up Anthony Weiner’s usefulness to his beleaguered party now. He has no credibility and isn’t likely to crawl out of the hole he dug from himself with his penis anytime soon. Anyone who thinks otherwise is no better than the GOP apologists who excuse every moral mortal character flaw of their party’s representatives.

Hypocrisy thy name is also willful denial.

Apparently Weiner is harping on another great American hypocrite and sexually indiscreet aging man, supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as he gets ready to hear a case on the health care bill – which incidentally his wife is a lobbyist working hard to defeat. Conflict of interest thy name is also hypocrisy.

As I watch Sarah Palin scoot by any real media coverage while the Left Leaning stupidly underestimate her very real and growing stronger with the bad economy chances of weaseling herself a presidential nomination, I recall a conversation I had not long ago with Rob.

“I am not wasting another vote on Obama this coming election,” I said.

“Oh,” he replied, “you going to vote Republican?”

“I’m not going to vote at all.”

“What if Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann become president and vice-president as a result?” he asked.

“It’s less than what the people of America deserve at this point,” I said. “Maybe a horrendously awful president in the White House will be the wake up call people will finally heed.”

“Nah, ” he said, “they are all doomed.”

Felt like the crack of doom today reading Facebook feeds at the Daily Kos. The majority of the posters were completely willing to dismiss what a wiener Wiener is just because he represents their political views. Ends meet means. Like a person’s character isn’t important? Apparently it’s not when a politician is perceived as “doing his job”, but what if he was a great teacher? Would his lewd hobby with other adults sit as well?

Character counts. We beat our kids over the head with that every day in public schools all over America. Shouldn’t it count in politics? I used to believe that what a politician did in his off time wasn’t the public’s business. But not when he can’t be honest about who he is when he brings his suspect values into the public arena. A real stand up guy would take his lumps, but then a real stand up guy doesn’t cheat on his wife or embarrass those who count on him with lies and penis pictures.

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On Snooki’s and Former Prom Queens


2012 Republican Presidential Candidates

Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr

If there is one thing I hate, it’s defending the less defensible of my gender from sexism. In the wake of the apparent upcoming tug of war for the hearts and minds of conservative leaning voters that pundits feel certain that Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann will wage, the stereotypes fly about in the thick and annoying manner of mosquitos on an Alberta late May evening.

The Huffington Post referenced it as “the battle of the Snooki’s” and I stumbled across a blog whose author believes that both Sarah and Michele are hot enough to settle their differences in bikinis and a mud pit.

A friend posted a reference to their combined, and supposed, brainlessness to her Facebook status that elicited a lot of yuks, but I just cringe and sigh.

Why?

Because even though there are easily just as many male politicians with batshit crazy ideas in the GOP, they are seldom the butt of jokes that infer that their gender is to blame.

It’s a given that women in the public spotlight, and especially those that dare to seek political office, can be taken down via their appearance, attacks on their single, married, mother or not choices, and by insinuating that their extra X exerts a difficult for them to control influence over emotions and their ability to think. Men are seldom, if ever, held to such stringent accounts. And so even if Palin and Bachmann are intellectually deficient, and I don’t believe that based on their levels of success, unless the same measures of fitness are applied to male candidates as well, this is not a good plan of attack for those opposed to either woman making a showing in the coming 2012 primary season.

The reason I feel this way is simple. Whatever modus operandi is sanctioned for use against them will be used again and again in the future. It will deter women from entering politics and marginalize or sink those that do.

And Palin and Bachmann are credible threats even if you don’t think much of them, their politics or the religious, conservative and very white-power oriented views they represent. What they are pushing sells and given the dire straits of many Americans – particularly the white working class which feels increasingly left behind and victimized – allowing them, Palin especially, a legitimate access to playing the victim role, is bad strategy.

Underestimating women seeking power roles, in my experience, nearly always bites back hard. Make no mistake that both Palin and Bachmann are in politics for what it brings them and not what they can do for their country, and people like that should be taken seriously.

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Sarah Palin Sets Her Sights And Passes Off So Someone Else Can Score


sarah palin's political hit list

Though it’s not actually clear that Sarah Palin’s SarahPAC “targeting” of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-AZ, incited the gunman who shot her in the head at point-blank range earlier today, it is clear that a sizable portion of the population in Arizona is bat-shit crazy.

A reader of Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Dish reported overhearing the following conversation shortly after word of the shooting began to spread through Tucson:

I am standing in the aisle at Costco when I found out my Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, has been shot dead up on the north side.

While I’m scrambling with my phone, two couples in front of me are talking about it and suddenly I hear one of the women say, “Well, that’s to be expected when you’re so liberal.”

And the other woman says, “Ohh, so we get to appoint a Republican?”

I did not trust myself to speak. I’m a Soldier. Please remind me what country I am fighting for? At least seven people are dead. She happens to be the only member of Congress married to an active duty military — he’s a Navy officer serving as an astronaut.

Giffords herself, in a eerie moment of prescience, about the dangers brewing in her state during the midterm elections that inspired Palin to “target” Democrats in close races had this to say,

“They really need to realize that the rhetoric and firing people up, and, you know, even things for example, we’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list, but the thing is, that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gunsight over our district. When people do that, you gotta realize there’s consequences to that action.”

A friend, (via my late husband) who lives in Tucson, had this to say about the shooting when someone asked her why she was worried that Democrats would retaliate,

“Because that is why she got shot. Not because she is a Dem, it is the issues. She supports liberal immigration views and most of AZ does not. She supports the healthcare reform and many are violently against it. The border of Mexico is very close to Tucson and many shots have been fired over this already, just never on a public figure. They have put other politicians and figures under protective custody on both sides of the debate.”

It’s the issues, stupid.

But not really. They claim it’s about immigration and being forced to go along with health care reform, but it’s heart is that the American Dream – built on unlimited acquisition and unsustainable upward mobility, whose heart is unlimited acquisition – is gone.

Not that it – the Dream – ever really existed. The whole thing was the ultimate cliché, a house of cards built on a sandy beach. But those in the middle bought in and those just below them were semi-content to pretend that with the right pair of straps on their boots they could move up too, and the illusion took root and grew in soil that has long since played out.

This last decade oversaw the last gasp and the bitch known as “payback” has moved in for good.

Because the shooter is in custody, his MySpace page and YouTube vids shutdown, it’s unlikely that the public will ever really know the truth. Which serves both sides. The GOP and Fox News can claim that he was a disturbed individual and that their courting of the lunatic fringe known as The Tea Party had nothing to do with the attempted assassination of Giffords, the death of an Arizona judge or the snuffing of an innocent nine-year old girl, while the Democrats can underplay and conciliate, letting their own liberal loony lap-dog fringe scream and cry conspiracy.

Meanwhile, the people, who have no fucking idea of what is really going on, will take uneducated sides and continue to give away their rights and trust in the wrong people. They have spent so much of the last couple of decades blindly rubber stamping the theft of their freedom that they haven’t any idea where they actually stand on the playing field anymore.

Immigration and health care are distractions. There are real, credible threats afoot, and it’s the people who are fiddling among the burning ruins of an America that never existed in the first place. It’s hard not to admire the brilliance and scope of what is going on, even while recognizing that something wicked continues its inevitable march our way.

I guess the revolution might be tweeted after all.

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