Remember what I said last week about stories you don’t need to read past the headline? For this one, I stopped reading after the first paragraph. I didn’t want anything to ruin the picture in my head:
SEATTLE, Wash. – A mountain goat that fatally gored a hiker, then stood over the man and stared at people trying to help, had shown aggressive behavior in the past, Olympic National Park officials said Monday.
You know? I just don’t want to know any more.
Hello, Tuesday. The goat story isn’t even the highlight of the news roundup, which I’m hoping bodes well for the rest of the week. Although you never know. I need to get to the gymnasium at some point today; my architecture of my knees feels like a collection of loose scrap, and if I don’t tighten up everything around them, I’m one slip on the ice away from a torn ACL, or worse. Still might be. I wish I knew what I ever did to my knees to offend them so; it’s not like I played football or acted in porn movies* or anything. Even my high-heel days were fairly short, as these things go. I have always been clumsy, however — I was still getting skinned knees as recently as, oh, a month ago.
* A former editor of mine once interviewed John Holmes. He said he couldn’t stay in porno forever: “It’s like pro football — the knees are the first things to go.”
If I sound a bit scattered, I am. Big news this week on the hyperlocal front — besides the missing banker whose body was found yesterday, it’s high election season. Oddly enough, I have yet to see a single TV ad for our governor’s race, much less anything else. I know this constitutes a blessing, but it is sort of strange. It must be because the big races around here are mostly pretty lopsided, and the local ones are still competitive but unlikely to spend on campaign commercials. Tonight I’m going to a candidate forum, for the school-board seat up for grabs. Should be a packed house; people care about schools around here, and at least one of the candidates has been so understated I still know practically nothing about her, so it’s one of those civic-duty things. I don’t expect scrapping — this being Preppyville — but I’m hoping for some spirited disagreement falling short of your average Detroit school-board meeting, where they frequently yell and sometimes throw things.
So let’s skip to the bloggage, eh? There’s so much good stuff here, all in cryptic, short teasers to encourage curious clickers:
Lawyers! Watch this. Everybody else, too.
When you ask Coozledad to give his bull a skritch on your behalf, he delivers.
If this guy were running for anything around here, I’d totally vote for him. Meet Jimmy McMillan of the Rent is Too Damn High party.
People think they have this town figured out. No one has this town figured out.
Just what America needs: A new way to lose your house to Wall Street.
Ready to take up my pickax and get to work.
Linda said on October 19, 2010 at 11:11 am
OMG, I wish I were you! We in Toledo are bombarded by ads–for Ohio, and for southeast MI congressional races. It was estimated that in 2008, NW Ohio viewers were hit with 40,000 TV ads. It’s like an experiment that should have been banned by international law.
RE: the new tax man. But-but-but, wouldn’t privatization of public functions make everything better? No, it means that you are faced with an adversary with few legal limits, and no accountability to anyone. Just like the Iraqis have felt in dealing with American contractors.
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alex said on October 19, 2010 at 11:35 am
Wow, Cooz, I didn’t know bulls could be such cuddly pets. Kitchy-coo!
Oh, and speaking of headlines that say it all:
Bathtub toy recalled after 19 boys hurt
http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20101019/BLOGS23/101019496
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LAMary said on October 19, 2010 at 11:37 am
Maybe Llewd was still feeling mellow from his time spent with the ladies?
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coozledad said on October 19, 2010 at 11:54 am
Those nineteen boys won’t be the first to break it off in a submarine.
I was just reading a story in Harper’s where a bunch of old peasants keep telling a woman “No goats in the Nativity”, because they’re “the devil’s beast”. I’m inclined to agree.
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Jeff Borden said on October 19, 2010 at 12:08 pm
Media watchers take note: The New York Times broke a story last night and it’s in the Chicago Tribune today that the board of directors at Tribco is ready to finally drop the axe on the ass clown CEO who turned the Tribune Tower into Delta House, but without the actual humor. Apparently, the front page Times story coupled with the idiocy of Lee Abrams forwarding an e-mail containing R-rated imagery of naked women last week has led the geniuses on the board to think maybe it is time for Randy Michaels to exit.
It’s nice to see these overpaid incompetents finally getting booted, but it’s also painful to realize they will leave with millions in their pockets despite the destruction they wrought. Being a bad CEO in America is a wonderful thing. You can trash a company into the gutter and still walk away with tens of millions.
Ain’t capitalism grand??
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Sue said on October 19, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Jeff Borden –
You forgot to add that after you trash a company, you can run for office on your business experience!
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LAMary said on October 19, 2010 at 12:20 pm
Sue are you speaking of Carly and Meg? When Carly left HP the stock went up 8 points on the first day. Now she wants to be a senator.
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Sue said on October 19, 2010 at 12:22 pm
Why yes I am.
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Jeff Borden said on October 19, 2010 at 12:51 pm
Carly Fiorina is a complete fraud. I’m not as familiar with Meg Whitman and her tenure at eBay, but at least she did not preside over a disastrous merger or ship tens of thousands of jobs overseas as La Fiorina did during her time. It is funny to see Ms. Whitman spending so much of her vast fortune for the opportunity to lead a bankrupt state facing a number of huge and profoundly complicated problems.
I am always amused at the idea of business executives transitioning into politics. Working as a legislator or governor has absolutely nothing in common with being a CEO, where your word is law and you answer only to a board.
Hopefully, both will be in the trash bin after the November elections, but who knows what Californians will do?
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Julie Robinson said on October 19, 2010 at 12:54 pm
A bit scattered here too, due to hyper-hyperlocal news: a call from our daughter that her purse was stolen. From a bar in Dublin. From under a pile of coats, where she thought it would be just fine while she danced with all the lovely people she had met. Innocents Abroad, anyone?
I’ll skip the boring details about hours on the phone with the bank and her on Skype since they wouldn’t talk to us, holding the cell on speakerphone next to the computer speaker. The alleluia moment was when street cleaners found her passport, driver’s license, debit card and keys. A new credit card will be delivered tomorrow to the organic farm outside Dublin where she’ll be working (it’s called WWOOFING) for the next week.
This trip can’t get over soon enough for Mom & Dad.
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moe99 said on October 19, 2010 at 1:00 pm
I watch only one show a week on commercial tv: House, MD. I was so pissed last night. There were 5 anti Patty Murray ads all in a row, only one of which had been paid for by her opponent. They were stupid and fact less. But they were very very negative.
Then there were the initiatives. There are two on the ballot to commercialize liquor sales and keep the new liquor stores open til 2AM (you can buy beer and wine in grocery stores now but not the hard stuff).
This, coming on top of the news about the banksters revving up to take over houses when folks default on property taxes, leads me to conclude that we are indeed living in Potterville.
Then there is this:
http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?ID=191782&R=R1
Glad to know that there are knucklehead assholes in every religion.
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Rana said on October 19, 2010 at 1:03 pm
I wish there were more coverage here. I got tremendously spoiled all those years in California, where every election is preceded by the arrival of a hefty stapled booklet in the mail, containing the text and pros and cons of each initiative, and all the candidates’ statements. Here, it’s a frustrating exercise in digging through the back pages of various official websites to even learn who’s running, one that taxes my fairly considerable Google-fu. It’s easy to see why so many voters here give up and accept the default party-line voting a number of the machines are programmed to prefer.
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beb said on October 19, 2010 at 1:11 pm
I wasn’t going to read about the bath tub toy incident until I read Coolze’s comment. This is just too, too funny. What are the odds that one of these nineteen “explorers” will someday be rushed to a hospital wearing two wetsuits with a pickle up their butt?
Sue, many years ago, long before I discovered that politicians aren’t always the sharpest knives in the drawer, I heard an explanation for how bad directors keep getting the chance to make more bad films. The thing is that once you direct a movie, however good or bad the final product you can put on your resume that he directed a movie. There are lots of people who have never directed a movie and comparatively few who have. So when someone is looking for a director the fact that you have directed a movie looms larger than the fact that you botched the job. Such is the case with Carly F. and Michigan’s candidate, Rick Snyder. Both can claim CEO experience despite that both ran their companies into the ground.
Both Snyder and his opponent Virg Benaro (sp?) have been advertising heavily, but mostly on cable news. I think.
You remember the story about the red toxic sludge that spilled into the Danube River. Seems the country of Hungry decided to “detain” the CEO of the company responsible in case there were criminal prosecutions. I know they’re a former soviet police state but I like the idea. And it says something about the role of the State versus the role of business. I would have liked to have seen the CEO of BP taken into jail when that oil well started gushing. And I think the president would have a far better regard today if he had declaimed a moratorium on bank foreclosures while these paperwork issues were worked out, and had sent the FBI in to investigate the apparently tens of thousands of cases of fraud because banks were handling mortgages properly. Sending people to jail is how you get an industry to shape up.
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Jeff Borden said on October 19, 2010 at 1:15 pm
We’re being deluged with negative advertising in the Chicago area, too. Most of it I can identify but there are a number of advertisements funded by groups I’ve never heard of, so clearly all that 527 cash is flowing into the market. One of the more egregious has some guy digging a deep hole –representing our national debt, which was so helpfully widened and deepened by the Bush administration– and the call to action to tell D.C. to quit spending. Whether this is Armey’s group, the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove or whatever is difficult to discern.
I can’t deny wishing Barack Obama was more like FDR, proudly and defiantly standing up to his detractors. One of the biggest mistakes the O-man made, I believe, was his effort at bipartisanship. The GOP was never going to work with him in the first place, so he should have gone directly to the people and, most importantly, his base.
Too late now. The next couple of years are going to be even worse than the past two, I fear, particularly as some of the loonier right-wingers take their seats in D.C.
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Dorothy said on October 19, 2010 at 1:24 pm
As promised, a link to my pictures from the rally in Columbus Sunday night:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/truvy57/sets/72157625198570850/
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Sue said on October 19, 2010 at 1:32 pm
Jeff Borden, I give Obama marks for trying bipartisanship, but he continued way past the time it was obvious to all that he was playing into their hands rather than making any progress. When the Republicans go Clinton on him, either next year or in his second term (assuming he gets one), maybe he’ll figure it out.
I have a much bigger problem with his tendency to stroke Dems who are screwing him over. Apparently you can actively work against the platform of your own party’s president and still get help when you’re desperately trying to hold onto your seat.
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Connie said on October 19, 2010 at 1:44 pm
I’ve just moved to Oakland County Michigan, the next county north of Detroit’s Wayne County. (I am in the western edge, known as the lakes district.) And just got cable installed. The network shows are filled with nasty ads, from unidentifiable organizations. My library is distributing the Oakland County LWV election guide, which appears to cover every election coming up, including tax millages, library boards, township boards, and more more. Having been here not quite two weeks I feel I know a heck of a lot about an election that I will not be able to vote in. Our facebook page has a link to the online version of the LWV voter guide, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Commerce-Township-Community-Library/170243933848
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Peter said on October 19, 2010 at 1:54 pm
I second you, Jeff. One good thing about living in the People’s Republic of Illinois is that elections are usually so lopsided there’s no need for nasty ads. I never thought I would pine for those old days.
To me, the worst ad by far is the one about soft drink taxes. The poor lady who just spent a paycheck on groceries is steaming because the government wants to tax wholesome food items like soft drinks, sport drinks, and juice boxes. “Congress should cut their fat before they tell me what to eat!” Hey lady, how about getting your blood sugar to a respectable level by cutting back on that fifth case of Coke products!
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Dorothy said on October 19, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Oh Julie! What a story. It’s a lesson learned for sure. I guarantee it’ll be the last time she puts her purse down anywhere without someone being there to guard it. It’ll be 30 years next Tuesday since my purse was stolen (yeah, I know, it sounds weird to remember the date but it was the day before my first wedding anniversary) and I STILL never leave my purse unattended. I scold strangers in the grocery store for leaving their bags in the seat of the cart while they shop. They think they’re paying attention to it, but I swear the thieves know they’ll break concentration for a few seconds and that’s all they need.
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Julie Robinson said on October 19, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Oh yes, there was a nice Danish man standing only 10 feet away and he didn’t see anyone. Makes me wonder how nice the Danish man was. The whole group had just finished eating and they gave her cash, then she put the whole tab on her credit card. I can’t help but be a little suspicious. Still, neither credit card or her debit card were used before we reported them, and I thought US passports were valuable on the street. Maybe they are too hard to alter anymore?
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Judybusy said on October 19, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Julie, hard lesson to learn, but at least she got her stuff back, especially the passport! I am travelling to Rome with a 17-year-old niece next June and am already trying to instill these lessons–as well as: “You will probably get noticed [tall, pretty, blue-eyed blonde] by men. Ignore any catcalls, whistles etc.” With a mortified look, she just nodded and said “uh-huh.”
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adrianne said on October 19, 2010 at 2:53 pm
My son Jack has decided: Jimmy McMillan’s got his vote for governor! The NY gov debate was high entertainment all around, with the former madam’s comment that she knows whores, and NY’s politicians give whores a bad name, to the very funny Libertarian candidate cracking wise. Carl Paladino was so nervous, at one point he bolted for the men’s room. Andy Cuomo had one human moment – he was sitting next to Jimmy McMillan and said, “You’re right, Jimmy, the rent is too damn high.” Cuomo got a high five from the gloved one after that.
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MaryRC said on October 19, 2010 at 3:45 pm
That lady (following your link) in the square dance costume … am I losing my eyesight or does she have a handlebar mustache?
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Dave B. said on October 19, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Square dancing? I Thought Detroit was the belly dancing hot spot.
http://www.pri.org/arts-entertainment/arts/detroit-belly-dancing-hotspot.html
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Jolene said on October 19, 2010 at 3:57 pm
You’re losing your eyesight. It’s just that she’s no longer young and has poochy cheeks that create a shadow in the low-light conditions of this photo.
Great pics from the Obama rally, Dorothy. Despite the long wait, it’s great that you could get so close.
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Sue said on October 19, 2010 at 4:12 pm
Holy gods. I just found out that Bristol Palin had to dress in a gorilla costume for her turn on that dancing show last night. The judges gave her a rating of 6-6-6.
I don’t know anything about this show. Can someone tell me whether that was a setup? Gorilla suit? 666? That sounds fishy.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 19, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Just saw on MSNBC caption “Viscous Cycle” — no irony indicated as to stickiness or anything like that.
Sigh.
It’s been up for a minute with Goolsbee, who is talking about a vicious cycle of the economy right now. Apparently, there are no producers in the booth screaming about that.
Jeff B., you’re looking at http://www.factcheck.org/2010/10/another-black-hole/ (link tells you who is paying for the ad, and the relative veracity of its claims).
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LAMary said on October 19, 2010 at 4:57 pm
Sue, Bristol only wore the suit for the first 30 seconds or so. Then she stripped down to a modest dress and comfy pumps. The first week she was on her dress was short and she got the highest score. Since then she’s been covered up and sort of disinterested in her performance. I feel sort of sorry for her.
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moe99 said on October 19, 2010 at 5:00 pm
The $116B Obama tax cut that no one seems to recall:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_10/026208.php
And we’ve all benefitted.
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Sherri said on October 19, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Take care of those knees! Says the woman who’s recuperating from ACL reconstruction three days ago. Women, for whatever reason, seem to be more prone to ACL tears than men, and even if strong quads don’t stop the pop, buckle of the ACL tear, they can limit the trauma and help the (unfortunately long) rehab.
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Jeff Borden said on October 19, 2010 at 5:29 pm
I posted yesterday that this likely was the dumbest election cycle in American history, but since then, things have gotten even more stupid.
The witchy little anti-masturbation idiot in Delaware, arguing for the inclusion of creationism in public school curricula appeared absolutely gobsmacked to learn the First Amendment prohibits such things. The debate involving the ever-devolving Christine O’Donnell drew laughter and gasps of disbelief from the august group of law professors and law students in the audience last night.
Then, Mama Malaprop herself called for the election of a West Virginia candidate to a Pennsylvania senatorial seat. Granted, SheWho may have been greatly shaken by the site of her revirginized daughter in a gorilla suit, but still, this is just dumb, dumb, dumb.
Living in Belize on $1,500 per month looks better and better to me.
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coozledad said on October 19, 2010 at 6:28 pm
JeffBorden: We’ve got a guy running for DA down here who crashed one of the OFA candidate’s forums, and said that as DA, he’d see to it that more offenders were exposed to the teachings of Christ.
I spoke with the guy running against him, and he reminded me of the virtues of an understanding of the profession. “A lot of people want to hear that you’ll turn offenders toward religion, but in addition to being proscribed by the constitution, I’d ask him to tell me, as DA, are you going to commute prison sentences in exchange for a defendant’s pledge to go to church? because that’s what he’s getting at, logically.”
He already had my vote. Now he’s got my attention. We’ve even got good candidates at the local level here.
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Jeff Borden said on October 19, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Cooz,
You’re lucky, man. There are some decent people in Chicago and Illinois politics –my congressman, Mike Quigley, is a very good and honest guy– but they are overshadowed by the clowns, crooks and connivers.
I suppose it won’t matter much in the next few years as we move from a democracy to a plutocracy. . .if we aren’t there already. How much income does the top 1% need to claim before we officially become a plutocracy? They’re up to about 24%. Is it when they hit, say, 40% of all income? Or is that when we officially become a banana republic? Economics was never my strong suit.
When I was a kid, I dreamed of being a surfer. Now, I wonder if I’m just enroute to becoming a serf.
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prospero said on October 19, 2010 at 7:23 pm
ou vote for a Republican, you vote for unmitigated ignorance. If there are people too stultified to understand this, I’m not joking, they shoyld be disenfranchised. DeanieBabies and Naderites, you must be morons to cut off your noses.
Don’t like health care? It’s a fuckload more than anybody else accomplished. Financial reform ditto. Snotty backbiting doesn’t do anybody any good.
So people will stay home because the President didn’t deliver? Do you care about the causes or are you intending to pout? Do you believe the Constitution says Oompa Loompa+one means an initiative shouldn’t pass the Senate? What in God’s name do you expect this guy to have done? There is no magic Presidential wand. If you want something different to happen, you should change the Senate, or at least demand the Senate act democratically.
That filibuster crap, that is bullshit. President can’t do dick about that. Voters can. How in the name of God does anybody vote for an obstructionist ahole like Mitch McConnell and still claim to be a loyal American? It’s ridiculous, actually. Guy’s loyal to his pockets and doesn’t give a shit about anybody else. and before the President can utter a syllable, Mitch says NO. Maybe he’s not a racist, but he sure as shit dislikes a black gut in charge. If the President came out for puppies, Mitch would say NO.
Mitch thinks judges should be bought by Massey, that enhances his salary. If a miner dies and nobody investigates the monstrously corrupt practices of the company, no skin off Mitch’s nose. But lockstep NOro discredit the Darkie President? Right up his alley.
But you know what smart guys say in Baltimore: Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
If this is a return to the days of Newt, we are all fucked and deserve it. Not I, though. I never said I’d vacate the country over such a ridiculous ahole as W. I know a lot of people did. A second Republican revolution and morons are in charge, and we are out of here.
He’s a racist pig, intent upon the Republican class war. They warned about judicial activism. Stealing an election and Citizen’s United, you cannot get more politically active, unless you go on a canned duckhunt right away following your decision.
At this point, voting for a Republican for anything is voting to suborn the Constitution. Aside from the obvious fact that most of their candidaewa are non compis mentis.
What’s astounding is that Teabaggers lead themselves to the slaughter.
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Kirk said on October 19, 2010 at 7:24 pm
Clarence Thomas’ religious right-wing wacko wife leaves Anita Hill a voicemail:
“Good morning, Anita Hill, it’s Ginny Thomas. I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. Okay have a good day.”
Andrew Gully, senior vice president of the Brandeis
University communications office, confirmed that Ms. Hill had
received the message and that she had turned it over to the
campus department of public safety. That office, in turn,
passed it on to the F.B.I.
N.Y. Times reporting this, by the way.
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Deborah said on October 19, 2010 at 7:30 pm
Jeff B, Serfdom is clearly what we are headed for. Who’d a thunk it?
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coozledad said on October 19, 2010 at 7:37 pm
Kirk: You wonder if Mrs. Thomas isn’t just trying to force her way into the public spotlight to work some grift, or if she was just sitting around with an empty box of Franzia on her lap, dialing for help.
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Kirk said on October 19, 2010 at 7:44 pm
Or it might be something she has been thinking about through years of vacation RV tours of Wal-Mart parking lots.
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prospero said on October 19, 2010 at 8:25 pm
Deborah.
I intend to be a rowdy and purposely disruptive serf. But when conservatives talk about class wars, I’m pretty sure you’ve hit the nail on the wide part. 30:1 in 1970, 300:1 in 2010. Why not whatever you don’t need for a bare bones existence working for the Lord of the Manor? Our magnanimous gift. It’s all misdirection. These people talked about judicial activism since God knows when. Americans have been judicial activized out of civil rights while the idea of individual rights was being demonized by “conservative” judicial activists. Subterfuge.
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brian stouder said on October 19, 2010 at 8:39 pm
Now dammit – stop with the gallows humor! The occasional whiney-righty comes in here and accuses us of being a buncha’ bitchy lefties who just can’t take it when the shoe is on the other foot*, and here we are confirming it.
For the record, I personally cannot believe how incredibly stupid this election cycle has been, too; but my question – which I ask as a fast-approaching-50-year-old is: is it really and truly that exceptionally stupid out there this year, or is this really the way things always have been, and always will be?
At the risk of disqualifying myself from ever winning an election for a Federal office (or for our local school board, for that matter), let me say that I don’t believe in American Exceptionalism, on either side of the spectrum (exceptionally great nor exceptionally deranged).
I have come to believe that our political culture (and leadership) is akin to surfing (and surfer boys and girls). I’d like it to be about more, but even despite the occasional world-class political surfer** that we put out into the elements, that’s all there is. (I suppose if we wanted to come up with some macro explanation for where the waves come from, we could – but it would only be a digression)
*or spikey high-heeled open-toed pumps
** I think President Obama is indeed a world-class surfer, and that when his re-election comes in 2012, the “Change” candidate of ’08 will indeed get to run AGAIN as a “Change” candidate, with a pack of obstructionist galoots in congress to run against
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prospero said on October 19, 2010 at 9:18 pm
Brian, It is far more stupid than normal. In the past, if a candidate advocated privatizing education, that would have been that for the idiot. When I was a kid, the idea that lunch counters should be free to discriminate against black patrons would have labelled him a racist. Of course, he would just have been George Wallace making sure he wasn’t out-niggered. You would hope the country had moved beyond mindless bigotry, but people in Arizona idolize Arpaio, who isn’t satisfied with denigrating his prisoners, he feels a need to use the color pink to denigrate both the prisoners and gay people in general. The governor concurs, except she’s a nutcase that believes headless bodies walked across the Rio Grande.
We are talking about total whack-jobs. I mean, I think if you vote or your garden variety GOP liar like the Oompah Loompa, when he claims to insist on balancing the budget, votes against extending relief to Americans in dire distress, and insists on extending tax cuts to the tune of $3 trillion, you’re pretty much too fucking stupid or too blindly partisan, and probably afraid of a black guy to be allowed to vote.
Organized Republicans are political thugs bent on seizing control. They do not give a shit about policy, or commonweal or the Constitution. Teaparty? Dick Armey’s money motivating a bunch of racist, nativist rednecks.
What actual Americans should be concerned about is the totally kneejerk use of Senatorial holds and the anti-democracy efforts of bought-and-paid-for Massey lackeys like that wormy-mouthed bastard Mitch McConnell. Very good things could have been accomplished in the last two years. Apparently, Republican politicians would rather screw over kids and struggling parents suffering from the bogus and botched Bush Administration than try to help fellow Americans. I mean, if it gets their victims to act like zombies, staple teabags to their straw hats, and vote for them.
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Catherine said on October 19, 2010 at 9:40 pm
I intend to be serf who actually lives in an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We will take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.
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Deborah said on October 19, 2010 at 9:43 pm
I have to say this coming election has me spooked. I am terrified of what we have in store for us if the looney tunes fringefolk win. Because of the economy I don’t put it out of the possible that disgruntled folks will act irrationally and vote these people in and then where will we be? In the dark ages I’m afraid, regarding healthcare (which really hits home to me and my family), education (which hits home to my family’s livelihood since my husband designs a lot of university and community college buildings and teaches). And not just for me personally but for all the people out there trying to educate their children in public schools and affording college everywhere. Not to mention issues like choice, birth control, privatizing social security (at my age I have to contemplate this!) and the like. This is the first time I can ever remember being personally worried about the shit storm ahead.
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alex said on October 19, 2010 at 10:07 pm
I was touched this past weekend listening to my dad—a longtime Republican—confess to being a staunch Obama supporter because of health care reform. Some poor guy was telling my dad how he’d just retired and was unable to obtain insurance because of “pre-existing conditions” that were relatively minor things that affect a lot of people middle-aged and older, so he had to go on COBRA—paying $600 per month out of a $1200 pension check—until he’s old enough for Medicare.
I think a lot of people who are unaffected by health care problems find it easy to buy into the bullshit. It may take a while for the benefits to percolate in the American mind. Or hit home. But I hope people will have the patience to realize that we are very lucky to have a true citizen legislator president who’s accomplishing more for “real America” than any president in recent history.
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Jolene said on October 19, 2010 at 10:30 pm
It is scary to think about what might happen if the Repubs take over, but the most likely outcome is that we’ll have two more ugly years as they throw one roadblock after another in front of anything Obama tries to do and not much will change. I don’t think they’ll take the Senate, though, and any effort to repeal health care reform would be vetoed. So, our problems won’t get solved, but some of the more frightening possibilities are not likely to come to pass.
It’s a shame. To me, our circumstances cry out for serious problem-solving–in education, energy, and so many other areas–and that Obama is eager to take these on. But the people buying our congressional representatives don’t seem to want those problems to be solved.
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prospero said on October 20, 2010 at 12:34 am
It’s entirely possible the so-called Republican landslide is some mainstream media, mindless, Milbank meme. If Democratic Party voters turn out, NFW. Republicans regularly wage war against people voting.
The spineless bastards are running ads in California en espanol encouraging Hispanic voters to abstain from voting. If you didn’t know before that these bastards were anti-democracy greedy creeps, that ought to tie it up with a bow. The implicit racism is positively stunning.
In Delaware, there are 185,000 registered Republicans. The 30,000 votes cast for the anti-masturbatory bi…, I mean witch, who is me, doesn’t say a lot for the tsunami effect.
How do you vote for somebody affiliated with a political party that opposes SChip and unemployment benefits after going out of their way to put people out of work? I mean, what sort of selfish shitheel do you have to be?
How about voting for a party associated with trashing the entire scientific community, or continuing to insist there were WMDs in Iraq and the whole expedition wasn’t just meant to enrich Halliburton shareholders?
Reasonable people, Christian people, people with any sort of moral compass, should find the behavior of Republicans in Congress both reprehensible and repugnant. Sure ain’t Christian. Sure ain’t even sensible. Abandoning the poor, the sick, that’s not American. Can’t actually pass for human.
Righteous anger. Well, yeah, funded by Dick Armey and the Koch Bros. and any number of anonymous foreign corporations, on the backs of the very people Republicans delight in fucking over.
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Michael said on October 20, 2010 at 5:32 pm
Ok, I can’t help my self. It seems just after taking the bench Justice Thomas was anxious about writing the majority opinion of the Court’s first Sexual Harassment Case. His clerks were surprised that he had barricaded himself in his office and began doing the research and writing himself. One clerk peaked in and asked; “Justice Thomas, can I help you with this?”
His reply; “Is Harass one word or two?”
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