Some quickies for you:
- Dinesh D’Souza, asshat extraordinaire, is a big whiny child. Those evil prosecutors are doing their job and trying to put him in prison. How dare they?! He’ll get probation and we’ll probably still have to see his idiocy on Bill Maher.
- Conservatives are freaking out because the President saluted with a coffee cup in his hand. I would rather have a latte in the middle of my salute than a Scottish Terrier. And never mind about the real problems this country has because the paranoid, desperate, white, male base eats up this shit up.
- Can I just say how much I admire Gabby Giffords? She is absolutely amazing to have come back from that horrible tragedy in Tucson AND launch a PAC to fight against NRA extremism. What’s even better? It’s working.
- If I hear one more liberal complain that the President isn’t liberal enough, is ineffectual and that Congress sucks, I’m going to go nuclear and remind them that it’s probably because they didn’t vote in the f*%!ing 2010 mid-terms. Here’s just one very good example of how that has hurt and will continue to hurt us for years to come.
- How effed up is that Emma Watson, of Harry Potter fame, gave a speech to the U.N. on feminism and as a result was threatened with sexual violence and having nude photos of her posted online. This kind of terrorizing online is getting worse, not better. I don’t know the solution but I really feel for any woman who is harrassed and terrorized because she speaks her mind on the Intertoobs.
- Love the fact that big tech companies are divesting themselves of ALEC. If you don’t know who they are, they’re what’s wrong with America. A group of corporate representatives and conservatives who draft “model” legislation that they then push using vast resources in multiple states. Their laws which include gems like SB1070, Stand your Ground, Voter ID, and many more are nightmares and they’re making headway in many state legislatures because people aren’t paying attention to what’s happening on the state level. They’re too busy hating the President (see “Coffeegate” above and Congress (lowest approval ratings ever) on the national level and worrying about things that aren’t immediate threats (Ebola, Isis, etc).
- And speaking of ISIS, don’t you just love that we’ve gone to war and there was absolutely no debate in Congress?! They’d rather have yet another vote on appealing Obamacare. Never mind that the rising cost of healthcare has actually slowed down as a direct result of the law, which was one of the main points of it in the first damn place. Who needs facts….right?
I’d better stop while I’m ahead. Methinks I’m getting my mojo for political blogging back and it’s about damn time!
Ms. D. Ranged In AZ 
I agree with all you said, what a surprise. Three quick (for me) points:
• As I said yesterday over at Bob’s place, the tradition, if that’s the right word, of presidents returning military salutes dates to 1981 and Ronald Reagan—a man, let us never forget, who spent World War II at Fort Sam Goldwyn, acting in training and propaganda films (and who slept in his own bed every night). Before that, no president returned salutes, not even retired five-star general Dwight Eisenhower, who spent World War II actually, you know, fighting World War II.
• One little correction, if I may: the f*%!ing midterms were in 2010.
• Emma Watson is a smart, talented, eloquent young woman and so of course the cellar-dwellers would be enraged that she dared to speak publicly on the negative effects of gender roles—both female and male. Five will get you eight there’s significant overlap between the subhumans threatening her and the subhumans who have threatened game designers and reviewers who dared to create and support games that weren’t mindless shoot-em-ups (how dare they!). I’m pretty sure there aren’t more sociopaths than there used to be, but the ones there are have gotten really good at using the internet as an amplifier.
Glad you’re feeling up to tackling political stupidity again.
Ah geez, I typed 2014 instead of 2010….my fingers are way too fast for my brain! Thanks for letting me know–its fixed already. I think I heard that about Reagan. He started lots of idiotic trends didn’t he? Good to see you commenting on one of my diatribes.
Yeah, Reagan was *special*, wasn’t he?
I’m always reminded of Molly Ivins’s line: “Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention.” (Damn, I miss that woman!) Well, a lot of Californians warned the rest of the nation about the one Paul Conrad dubbed “Reagan Hood”—because he robbed from the poor to give to the rich—and nobody paid attention, and he did to the country what he’d done to the state, only with more nukes and fewer functioning synapses.
Sorry. Sore subject, even after all these years.