Hey Ho, West and Bachmann Gotta Go!

With the first Obama-Romney debate in the can even the calmest Obama supporter is worried about the future. Andrew Sullivan was downright apoplectic. Bob Herbert seemed just plain angry: The president let his people down. And if he’s capable of doing that in an election that is clearly so important, it means he’s capable of doing it again if he wins a second term.

Come November 6, whether Obama wins or loses, the far more important issue will be what kind of Congress we will be looking at. It is unlikely that the House will return to Democrat control but we can at least hope to be rid of a few nutjobs. We cannot afford to lose the Senate, which would guarantee more gridlock in a second Obama term or give Mitt Romney carte blanche to take us back to the days of Ozzie and Harriet.

So, on election night I’ll be keeping one eye on the POTUS race and the other on the following legislative battles:

Allen West: This certifiably loony Congressman from Florida must be given his walking papers. Back when he was running he famously claimed he had a higher security clearance than the POTUS. Then, more recently he channeled Joseph McCarthy, claiming that a very precise margin of Democrats were card carrying Communists.

I wrote more about crazy Allen back in the day.

Michele Bachmann: MSNBC’s Chris Matthews put Minnesota’s Bachmann on the map when she channeled her inner Joseph McCarthy on “Hardball” saying that the media should investigate which of her peers in Congress were “anti-American”.

More recently she made baseless accusations against a devoted public servant, Huma Abedin because of supposed family associations to the Muslim Brotherhood. Even conservatives such as John McCain could not stomach this. Despite her record as paranoid crackpot, I have a small place in my heart for Michele. During a Presidential campaign event, a lesbian used her child as a prop to humiliate Bachmann. Bachmann’s behavior toward the child was kind and gracious. Then during her appearance on Jimmy Fallon’s talk show, the house band played “Lyin’ Ass Bitch” as Bachmann came on stage, no doubt fully knowing that Bachmann would not be in on the “joke”. Fallon later apologized. I felt very bad for Bachmann in both these instances and I was left with the impression that’s she’s well meaning, albeit nutty as a fruitcake. She even seemed to tamp down the crazy a bit during her bid for President. Still, Michele needs to go.

Todd Akin: Not content to be a knuckle dragging Neanderthal in the House of Representatives, Todd decided to run against Claire McCaskill for a Senate seat from Missouri. As we all know by now, Todd thinks that when a woman is REALLY raped (or in his words the rape is “legitimate”) the woman’s body has special powers to fight off rapist sperm and not get pregnant. Do I really need to say any more?

Joe Walsh: No, not the former member of the Eagles. This is Illinois’s GOP contribution to the House of Representatives. Joe is an over caffienated gaffe machine who recently said that his opponent Tammy Duckworth was talking too much about her military service. We won’t go into the fact that Tammy left a few limbs behind while serving her country. We also won’t discuss that Joe is behind on child support.

George Allen: More proof that there is always a second act in American politics (see Bill Clinton), George ran against Jim Webb for Senate in 2006 and while on the campaign trail referred to a brown skinned Webb staffer as “Macaca“. I’m not sure anyone ever figured out exactly what the heck George was talking about other than that it seemed ethnically antagonistic and ultimately cost George the election. Well, he’s baaaaaaaaaaaack and trying to defeat former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine for a seat in the Senate. Let’s hope Kaine prevails.

The Following Birthers:

Cliff Stearns, Florida

Mike Coffman, Colorado

Vicky Hartzler, Missouri

Anyone supporting this basically racist theory that Obama is not an American deserves a kick out the nearest Capitol exit door.

We may not be able to return Obama to the White House but perhaps we can return some sanity to the House and Senate. Who are your choices for the crazies who must go?

Respectfully,
Rutherford

Allen photo by: Gage Skidmore [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Bachmann photo by: Gage Skidmore [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

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Re-Imagining Reagan and the End of Palin (We Can Only Hope)

The Myth of Reagan

Sometimes the legend is way more powerful than the man behind it. The hero of conservatism is Ronald Reagan, President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Every cockeyed idea coming out of the GOP lately supposedly has Reagan’s mark of approval all over it. That’s why it was refreshing to see ThinkProgress remind us that Reagan was just as guilty of “class warfare” as our current president.

In fact, not only did Reagan condemn under-taxation of the rich, he actually raised taxes several times during his administration (albeit after cutting them massively at the beginning). The truth is that the Ronald Reagan of the 80’s could not get nominated by today’s GOP. The fact that they re-imagine Reagan to justify their current policies is completely consistent with a party that lives in an alternate reality.

Now Can She Please Just Go Away?

After much prayer and serious consideration, I have decided that I will not be seeking the 2012 GOP nomination for President of the United States.

via Sarah Palin Will Not Run for President – ABC News.

You have to hand it to Sarah Palin. Unlike Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, at least Sarah listens to God. You see, God is the ultimate political strategist and there is no way He advised Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann to run for President. At least Sarah took the Almighty’s advice. Now the question remains what lies ahead? In an interview with Fox’s Greta Van Susteren, Sarah discussed and dismissed the possibility that she might be politically dead with this decision. I think she should think again. Now that the long tease is over, Palin is irrelevant. The only reason there was to tolerate her word salad foolishness was the possibility she might make headlines with a Presidential run. With that possibility gone, Sarah is now a truly powerless ditz.

If you need proof, just look at the interview with Van Susteren. Greta started the interview not by discussing Sarah’s decision but by asking her what she thought of Apple genius Steve Jobs’ untimely death. In effect, Greta was saying, “before we talk about the end of your footnote to history, let’s discuss some consequential news.”

While I hope Ms. Palin simply returns to Alaska to be with her family, it doesn’t really matter. Regardless of how much we see her on Fox News, ultimately she will end up being nothing more than the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

Photo credit: Ronald Reagan via Wikipedia

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Farewell to T-Paw and Change.org

Where T-Paw Went Wrong

It’s been a week since Tim Pawlenty (known in the Republican hood as T-Paw) withdrew from the GOP Presidential race. There hasn’t been a heck of a lot of real analysis on his withdrawal. Let’s face it. Watching Pawlenty was a lot like watching paint dry. He was hardly a media darling. Still I’m surprised that I haven’t seen a good post-mortem on his campaign.

Maybe I just don’t understand GOP politics but I have the prescription that would still have Pawlenty in the race today. Very simply, target the right demographic. For reasons that totally befuddle me, Pawlenty decided to take on Michele Bachmann and go after her voting block. It doesn’t take a Sigmund Freud to figure out that Pawlenty with his vanilla demeanor was a rival of Mitt Romney, not Michele Bachmann. To put it a bit differently, there are two factions of  GOP candidates this season, the sensible and to varying degrees, the wild-ass crazy. Pawlenty, no matter how much he wanted to be the bad boy you don’t bring home to Mama, was in the sensible league with Romney and Huntsman. Pawlenty should have saved his money, like Mitt did, and waited for the right opportunity. Instead, he blew his entire chest on Iowa and to make matters worse, blew it on the Ames Straw Poll which everyone now knows is NO predictor of future victory.

But then, I’m not really sorry to see Tim go. Tim is, in a word, a punk. Call me old-fashioned but I find something wrong with a candidate who shrinks away from attacking the acknowledged front-runner (Romney) and instead goes full throttle against the only woman in the race. Tim’s lucky he ran out of money because if he hadn’t, he would eventually have had to man-up. I’m not sure T-Paw had the testosterone to run the race to the end.

Why I’m Through with Change.org

For over a year now, I’ve subscribed to e-mails from Change.org. Like a typical liberal, I was moved by the organization’s commitment to social justice. I didn’t keep track but I’m guessing I signed an online petition or two over the past few months. I must admit, as the months wore on, their e-mails didn’t so much move me to social indignation but rather depressed the heck out of me. I also had the sneaking suspicion that some of the folks for whom Change.org advocated didn’t really deserve the advocacy. The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back came in the form of an article on the makers of “Sesame Street”, The Sesame Workshop (known as the Children’s Television Workshop back when I was a kid).

Apparently the folks at Sesame Workshop had to release a statement saying that they would not have the characters Bert and Ernie get married. Yes, you read that right. Some gang of absolute idiots had petitioned Sesame Workshop to have Bert and Ernie get married. Change.org facilitated the petition. The simple translation of Sesame Workshop’s very polite statement was “for goodness sake, these are PUPPETS! What the hell is wrong with you?”

Now apparently Change.org and the authors of the petition felt that in a time of high suicide rates among gay youngsters, having Bert and Ernie, who have roomed since they came on the scene in 1969, get married would send a message that being gay is ok. It would be in the vein of the “It Gets Better” campaign.

I propose that one way to make “it get better” is stop sexualizing children. I don’t doubt that gender preference is deeply ingrained and very possibly innate. That does not mean that such a preference needs to manifest between the ages of two and four (the demographic of “Sesame Street”). The notion that a four-year old is homosexual, or heterosexual for that matter, is to my mind patently ridiculous. The Sesame Workshop has stated that the friendship between Bert and Ernie teaches kids that very different kinds of people can be friends. That is sufficient in teaching tolerance to kids. If by some wild stretch of the imagination little Johnny says to his Mommy “I want to kiss a boy but I don’t think anyone will like me if I do”, Mommy can always say “people can still like you if you’re different. Look at Bert and Ernie. They’re different. They look different. They like different kinds of things. And they like each other a lot.” This lesson in tolerance can be given without having to tell a four-year old that Bert sticks his pee-pee in Ernie’s bum-bum.

Before everyone accuses me of being a homophobe, let me be perfectly clear. I believe consenting adults can do whatever the heck they want with each other and it’s nobody’s business but theirs. I also believe that two people who love each other, with a sexual component, should be allowed to marry in a civil ceremony if they so please, regardless of gender. However I draw the line at how we introduce children to sexual concepts. The notion of teaching a four-year old that Bert and Ernie are gay (and all that goes along with that) gets me as annoyed as the constant heterosexualization of minors that gets portrayed on the Disney Channel on a regular basis. Our kids should be worried about reading, writing and arithmetic and how to be kind and compassionate to their fellow human beings. They should not have to be worried about what to do with their penises and vaginas. Why can’t we let a four-year old be a four-year old? They’ll have plenty of opportunity to wrestle with sexual urges when they hit puberty.

Sometimes liberals have trouble picking their battles. Now that Change.org has shown such bad judgment in trying to turn a wonderful kid’s show into an episode of Dr. Ruth, they can continue their battles without me.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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