Time for A Pick-Me-Up!

Nothing like a nice, happy tune to get your mind off things, is there?

Creating the Perfect Republican Candidate: Step #1

First, you need an appropriate look, and the Mads have everything all worked out for you:

After that?

Well, really you don't need much more than that.  Most of the GOP candidates are empty suits anyway - but you must remember to purchase the Realistic Action Batch accessory, or the voters won't think he's a real man.

Pity Joe Scarborough

I don't like Joe Scarborough, or his MSNBC show Morning Joe.

He comes across as too much the standard-brand conservative moron, seems all too willing to let Patrick Buchanan camp out on set to spew his racist venom, and why Mika Brzezinski hasn't slapped the taste out of his mouth by now I have no idea.

But you get a bright flash, every now and then, that makes watching it priceless.

Yesterday or so ago, they ran a clip of a rally featuring Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan together.  The crowd was appropriately enthusiastic, and started chanting Ryan's name when he was introduced.

Mittens waved for silence and started chanting "Romney-Ryan, Romney-Ryan . . . "

The crowd's enthusiasm and participation faded, and fast.

Watch the reactions:

Poor Joe.

Bwahahahahaha!

The fun bit is Mika trying so hard not to smile, and Ed Rendell grinning like he just got laid.

If I didn't know any better, I would swear, hand on heart, that Mittens is trying to throw this election.

Been a Busy Three Weeks for Political Schadenfreude

My, my, my . . . it's been a while between posts, and I've been remiss.

Time to catch up with Campaign Apocalypse!

According to the polling data (and we must always remind ourselves, gentle readers, that polls follow the electorate - they don't dictate to it), President Obama and Vice President Biden have opened a small but significant lead over his opponents, Chauncey McBumble and his sidekick, The Eddie Munster Lookalike.  Leads have opened up in key states such as Florida and Ohio, and it must be pointed out that no modern GOP candidate has won the Presidency without winning Ohio.

If the numbers hold up, Obama will win on November sixth.  Now, that's a mighty big IF.  Twenty-four hours is a long time in politics, and we currently have forty-two days and four debates remaining before Election Day.

Fortunately, Obama has an ace up his sleeve.

That ace is Mitt Romney, a/k/a Chauncey McBumble.

Don't believe me? 

Check out the video

where he appears to write off nearly half of the US population as moochers who pay no taxes.  That's a lie, by the way - the people he speaks about may not pay federal income taxes, but do pay other taxes, fees and imposts.

Check out his 60 Minutes interview,

 where he suggests that The Poors can simply go to the emergency room to get free care - which, by the way, is probably the stupidest thing he's said since he proclaimed that "Corporations are people too, my friend!"

(And for added Irony Points, check out the spray-on tan on Romney - it looks like they hosed him down with the John Boehner Body Wash prior to his earlier interview on Univision.)

The best source of ammunition in the Obama team's armory consist of Mitt Romney talking up about what a completely clueless dick he is.  Half the time he spends campaigning is spent in trying to walk back what he said previously, or having his campaign staff go on Fox 'News' to try and explain things.  The Chattering Classes among the GOP are starting to foam at the mouth about Romney's increasingly apparent incompetence - that is, when they're not trying to explain the Governor's poor polling numbers as an example of media bias.

Hard to justify that argument when Fox's own polls show Obama leading (of course, they don't put that on their Fox Nation blog - don't want to frighten the sheep, now do they?)

So, dear readers, you may be asking what I've been doing in the weeks following the conventions.

I've been basking in warm, snuggly schadenfreude.

Well, You Expect This When You Repeal DADT (Heavy Snark Advisory)

You can almost hear the Right Wing Choir starting to tune up in the background, all ready to start screeching that this is what happens when the military doesn't keep gays either in the closet or just off the base entirely.

It seems that Brigadier General Jeff Sinclair, deputy commander in charge of logistics and training for the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan, is being sent home to face sex charges.  It is alleged that he had coerced several women into having sex with him, along with misusing a government credit card -

Wait.

What?

He's charged with raping women?

Not men, huh.

So the General was playing with his privates, but it had nothing to do with The Gay?

Oh.

Never mind, then.

Let the Carnage Begin!

Obama Speaks . . . Dems Excited, GOP Pooh-poohs, and Why You Should Never Overlook a Pooh-pooh . . . Why the GOP is In Trouble . . . 

So, on the last night of the DNC, Obama stood up and, after saying the obligatory Mantra of Acceptance for his nomination, proceeded to articulate his vision and the stark choice facing the voters in November.

It wasn't bad, really.  I watched and listened to it.  He didn't lay as much smack down on Romney as John Kerry and Joe Biden had, but then he didn't need to; those two had managed to flay the GOP position straight down to the bone before fighting over the juicier bits of the marrow.

It was a pretty stark choice, too - whether to carry on forward, although the road to recovery will be a long and hard one, or go back to the same sequence of tax cuts, lies and bullshit that drove the economy into the cesspool in the first place.

Seems pretty damned clear to me.

Obama also jumped all over Romney in the most roundabout and decorous way about our troops and our veterans.  Again, Kerry and Biden had used machetes, Clinton had used a stiletto, but Obama merely added a spicy mixture of sea salt, lemon juice and Naga Ghost pepper extract into the wounds.  

When he was done, the crowd went wild, as opposed to what we heard in Tampa (insert Fluttershy voice:  "yay").  I should think that the assembled delegates, superdelegates and various boosters went home energized and ready to work toward a Democratic victory in the fall.

The right wing pundits, however, pooh-poohed the speech, saying that Obama had done nothing (when, in fact, he'd covered more ground than Romney's mushmouthed and insipid acceptance speech).  I can only hope that the Obama campaign doesn't ignore their pooh-poohs.  That is risky behavior:

As you can see.  Can't pooh-pooh a pooh-pooh.

Now, please recall that I am a Republican, and quite a bit like Charlie Crist the GOP has left me far behind.  But I know my people, and you can expect an avalanche of hatred and fearmongering from all wings of the once-Grand Old Party - the Taliban, the Wackos, the Zombies, and the Racists.  They have a lot of money on their side; Romney was caught embracing one of the Koch brothers on his way to give his speech in Tampa.  Oh, the media outlets cut away, but one camera caught it, and I hope hay is made while the sun shines out of The Hug.

We shall use The Truth, the GOP will use The Bullshit.

Not lies, dear readers.  Bullshit.

Dr. Harry Frankfurt, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Princeton, opined in his essay on the subject that liars know the truth, but make a conscious effort to direct you away from it.  Bullshitters, however, don't care about the truth or lies, so they're free to make up whatever leaps into their tiny minds.

It's freedom, man!

So Paul Ryan can blather on about how Obama was able to go back in time to close the auto plant in Janesville, and how he ran a marathon in twenty minutes or so.

So Mitt Romney can talk about how he and his wife lived hand to mouth, and how he's really unemployed.

But the GOP is in trouble, and that trouble stems from the fact that, once you peel back the layers of ad money, once you sift through the mountain of bovine excrement, They Have Nothing.  Not a sausage; nothing but the same thing that got us all in this predicament in the first place, and the only remedy they can prescribe is More of the Same.

We have a choice, and I've already made mine.

I'm voting for Barack Obama.

This Doesn't Surprise Me

Former NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw was rushed to a North Carolina hospital after feeling "lightheaded" at a taping of some show or other.

This is unsurprising.  Brokaw feeling lightheaded, I mean.

The man's turned into such a lightweight I'm amazed he doesn't need custom-made weight belts to keep from having his vacuous head hurl his body aloft and into the stratosphere.

Two Days In: Fear and Loathing, Treachery and Oratory

First, fair's fair, so cue the music:

And now, on with the show!

The Democratic Party's quadrennial convention opened up in Charlotte, North Carolina to much fanfare and quite a bit more ethnic diversity and enthusiasm than its GOP counterpart in Tampa a week earlier.

Ethnic diversity?  Hell yes; the Republican Convention had - exactly - 46 African-American delegates, which kind of gives you an indication of just how highly the GOP is rating the largest minority in the country.

Enthusiasm?  Yes.  Despite President Obama being a bit of a disappointment - namely by pursuing the illusory myth of bipartisanship in the face of an obstructionist Republican caucus - delegates came to Charlotte determined to put their man back into the Oval Office.

Most of the Twitter feed from the Right reflected the unhealthy levels of Fear they have toward the Obamas after Michelle Obama spoke Tuesday night.  The Corner might have been a virtual Klan rally.

But Tuesday night was a full-throated excoriation of the GOP platform regarding women and minorities and abortion and healthcare and economic policy and . . .

It was capped by Michelle Obama's quite eloquent and at times emotional speech.  She put herself head and shoulders above Ann Romney, who appeared weak as dishwater in the oratorical department.

Of course, right wing nabob Erick Erickson had the grace to refer to Tuesday night as the "Vagina Monologues," which shows just the kind of classy guy he is.

Wednesday night opened on a note of treachery and mayhem, as the party platform was hastily amended to include an endorsement of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and inserting a smattering of "God"s into the text.  The changes, reportedly coming from Obama himself, were an obvious reaction and capitulation to the screeching of the Right at the fact that the Democratic platform didn't have those things.

Also on the horizon was the President's harebrained assertion that the GOP would "come around" and start cooperating with him after he got re-elected.  Of which, see more later.

But the biggest news Wednesday was the appearance of The Big Dog.  Yes, the man whose penis single-handedly strikes terror into the hearts of every right-wing cretin; the man who, in act, drove the Republicans into such a foaming rage that they actually impeached him.

Bill Clinton.

He was allowed to talk past his time limit, but no one cared; he very eloquently and neatly eviscerated the Republicans, while all the time staying well-mannered and precise in his delivery.  His argument that Democrats were responsible for more private sector jobs since 1961 than the GOP was determined to be "fact" by Politico.

His argument that politics should not be a blood sport was buttressed by the fact that his wife was appointed as Secretary of State by President Obama, who he publicly embraced at the end of his speech.  Hillary was out of the country at the time, doing her job.

So the stage is set:  Clinton put Obama's name into nomination, and it remains for Barry to step out tonight and give his acceptance speech.

And then . . . let the blood sport begin!