Please Cut the Crap!

Open Appeal to Caribou Barbie: Please Go Away!

Seriously; when does Caribou Barbie actually go away? Is there any way to speed up the process?

 

I get the media's fascination with her; I really do.She's comedic gold. I know, every time I see her, the one-liners flow like the oxycontin dispenser at Limbaugh's house. In my experience, I can't remember a political train wreck lasting so long. This is starting to remind me of the time Lawrence Taylor broke  Joe Theismann's leg on Monday Night Football in 1985. I was working at The Federated Group in West Los Angeles at the time, and we had about 100 televisions tuned to that, and ABC was sure to show Theismann's leg break over and over and over, in slow motion for what seemed like hours.

It was gruesome. And watching Sarah Palin isn't entirely unlike that.

 

What the hell possessed John McCain to choose this woman as his running mate, anyway? I'm not a huge McCain fan, because I disagree with him on most policies, but he seems at least a step or two ahead of morons like John Boner (sp?) or Mitch McChinless, in that he actually seems to think once in a while. He must have just looked at pictures of Caribou Barbie, however; there's no way she spoke to him and enthralled him. I guess there could have been sexual favors involved, but I'd like to give McCain a little more credit than that, and I would like to prevent further nightmares from interrupting my sleep patterns. Perhaps 24 years earlier, McCain was one of those who taped the football game and kept watching the leg break over and over…

 

I saw a news article the other day that reported that nearly three-quarters of Republicans plan to vote for her for president. First of all, who gives a shit? I'm a huge Obama supporter, and I can't even tell you how I'm going to vote for president 40 months from now. Therefore, anyone who answers a question like that is kind of stupid, anyway. The problem is, no Republican has ever won the presidency without getting at least 85% of the Republican vote, and that was back before the numbers of Republican voters had dwindled to a handful. Last I saw, the number of voters who described themselves as Republican was below 25%. I know this is math, but has anyone told Caribou Barbie, or the nimrod wingnuts who keep touting this  number as proof of something special that three-quarters of a quarter means you have a hell of a long way to go to get to half.

 

Not that she's ever going to run for president, anyway. Hey, brainiacs on the right! If she was going to run for president, she'd be padding her resume, not stripping it bare. Oh, sure; the true believer wingnuts will vote for her because she's cute and "folksy" and because she says all the bullshit they want to hear. But who else is going to vote for someone whose main job is as full time mother (there's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't qualify someone as president!), and whose entire political experience consists of two terms as mayor of a small town (and she even screwed that up), and half a term as governor of what is essentially a socialist state, before she quit for a bunch of reasons she lied about (she's not costing her state a dime in legal costs; the lawyers working on her ethics complaints were on retainer), as leader of the free world. Look, as much as I despise George W. Bush, he was more qualified going in than Caribou Barbie. Now, look at everything he screwed up and ask yourself; do we really want someone with even less experience running the country?

 

No, she quit to make money, folks. You'll see. She'll make millions on a book tour, for example although I'd advise her not to repeat the same mistake "Joe the Plumber" (who's neither a "Joe" or a plumber, by the way) made with his book tour. He should have stuck with signing books at Wal-Mart in rural areas, where they don't have access to journalists and talking heads who actually tell the truth. Joe learned this the hard way, when he scheduled stops in places like Washington, DC and New York City, and no one showed up because, well, that pick-em-up truck they paid cash for back in 1965 woulda overheated if they'd a tried to drive down them big streets.

 

Just watch. Within weeks after she gives up her job as Governor of Alaska once and for all, she'll turn up all over the media again, signing all sorts of million-dollar contracts to do all sorts of irritating shit. You just know she's going to show up on Fox News, which is where all right wing officials-turned-pundits go to die, politically speaking. And I say, good riddance. I never see Karl Rove's ugly mug, I don't have to listen to Newt Gingrich's attempts to sound smart for the unwashed masses; I ignore Fox News as much as possible, because I just don't care. Their highest-rated program has about 2.5 million viewers, three-quarters of which are tied to chairs in nursing homes and forced to watch by orderlies, because Murdoch probably subsidizes the home and demands it. I even toyed with the idea of putting together an anti-Fox News blog for a while, until I realized I'd actually have to watch that shit. My stomach couldn't handle it.

 

Whatever you're going to do, Palin, go do it already. If you're going to change your mind about quitting, then do it. If you're going to quit and go work at Fox News, or have someone ghostwrite some more swell columns for ya at the New York Post, you betcha, then go do it. But stop calling press conferences and talking about it, and then complaining that the press is hounding you. Stop lying, stop trying to pretend you know anything about politics, or even government, and please stop speaking into microphones.

 

I have a headache. Just go away...

The Goal: Health Insurance Without the BS

Here are a few things to think about:

The United States is the only industrialized nation in the world in which a citizen can get sick and lose everything they've worked for their entire life.

 

The United States is the only industrialized nation in the world in which people die because they can't afford a doctor.

 

The United States is the only industrialized nation in the world in which those most likely to need medical care are actually not allowed to pay into it.

 

The United States pays far more per capita for health care than any other country in the world, even though nearly a quarter of the population is not covered at any given time.

 

The United States has been regressing in recent years when it comes to major health statistics. According to the World Health Organization, we are ranked 37th in major health statistics, such as mortality, infant mortality and life expectancy. There are actually pockets in this country with health statistics that rival the worst third world toilets.

 

On an economic level, companies operating in the United States are at a major competitive disadvantage, because we are the only industrialized nation that doesn't provide its people with basic health insurance.

 

We should be ashamed of our status in the world.

Patience as a Virtue

I know there's a growing impatience with the Obama Administration, especially among progressives.  And I know there's a growing sense that he's abandoning his principles for political expediency, and a crazy notion that he can bring everyone in this bipolar country together for a chorus of Kumbaya, which all of us who have ever had a brush with the wingnuts knows is pretty much impossible.

 

But he hasn't abandoned his principles; if anything, the reality is just the opposite of that. He's living by them, and the end result of his presidency will be something pretty special.Don't let your ADD get the best of you; it's better to do something right than to do something fast.

 

By way of example, let's address his approach to gay rights. It cracks me up when I hear otherwise intelligent people suggest that Obama could simply wipe out "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" with the stroke of a pen. Those same people suggest that all he has to do is refuse to enforce it, and no soldiers will be hurt and all will be well with the world.

 

Sorry, folks, but this is a load of crap, and you should know better.