We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Fox News is a little behind the curve on this one:
A painting that features President Obama posed as Jesus Christ crucified on is on display at a community college art gallery in Boston. The painting by Michael D’Antuono is part of a larger exhibit called “Artists on the Stump – the Road to the White House 2012.” It’s on display at the Bunker Hill Community College Art Gallery until Dec. 15th. The painting is called “Truth” – and shows the president with his arms outstretched. A crown of thorns rests on his head.(link)
Of course, Maggie's Farm featured the original artwork back in 2009. It's much less offensive and blasphemous and trite than Fox suggests, and it's got a beat and you can dance to it. The seventies had much better music than the 2010s, and we can only dream of Carter-era levels of commerce at this point, but a bunch of sons of the desert dragging Americans out of our embassies really puts me in that nostalgic mood.How about you? Just like old times.
I wonder if Ted Koppel will show up on TV late tonight?
It's been sort of amusing watching people from the right side of the blogosphere weigh in for over a year with political advice for Willard Romney. They'd take a flurry on the pizza guy. Look over there, they'd say! If only Romney was a fat, loudmouthed ex-congressman, smug for no reason, then he'd get somewhere. Yelling RON PAUL! would solve everything. Why doesn't he foam at the mouth like the porcine blowhard from New Jersey? Romney just smiled and kept going. Let's face it: Romney is the Amiable Terminator. He won't stop until he's shaken the hand of every Sarah Connor in the phonebook, and asked each in turn if she needs some canned food to tide her over until payday. Then he goes back to the phonebook and starts in on all the Sarah Connellys.
Romney is a rare thing in American public life. He is what he is. You can see how pleasant, but stiff, he is in that video. He cannot be what he is not, even while his position requires that he mix with people who are not like him. Some might call that good manners. People who have no manners don't recognize good manners in others. They call it standoffishness, or aloofness, or call you a robot for being polite. Many see decency as a kind of accusation. There's no other way to evaluate the Republican response to Romney. They don't know what to make of a decent, earnest person. They were hoping for devious so they could win. The other side does that constantly, why shouldn't we? Romney's not interested. He owes you nothing if he loses. You owe him a lot for him even taking up the cudgels on your behalf. He's successful and happy and politics is bucket of guts to step in for a person like him.
Blog writers are just blog commenters that go first, and they all know what Romney should be doing. They envision the perfect candidate -them. I might point out to these kings of that rock there to this clod of earth under their shoes, that Romney got himself elected Governor of Massachusetts. You're giving political advice to a Mormon Republican who figured out how to be elected governor of Massachusetts.
Romney's detractors on the left aren't worth talking about. Romney and his family could be defamed --and Lord, weren't they -- but there's close to nothing in his personal or public life that isn't above reproach. People are imperfect creatures of course, but every once in a great while you meet people who seem incapable of deliberate misbehavior. The human foibles we are all subject to can be teased into imprecations of malice, but any reasonable person can see there's no there, there in the Oakland of Romney's misdeeds. He's a nice person, a capable and commendable businessman, a competent and genial public administrator, he's married to a nice person, they raised a large crop of nice people together, and so forth.
I come not to praise Romney, nor to bury him in predictions and advice. I'd just like to express my thanks to him, here, where he surely will not see it, for allowing me, once in my life, to vote for an entirely decent, honorable, and capable person to be the chief magistrate of the United States. That has never happened to me before. To me, he cannot lose. America might. It won't be his fault.
It's just gravy that a vote for him is a vote against his opponent, who is, and always has been a malicious, callow, greedy, grasping, low-rent A-hole. I won't even mention it.
Hey, if you've been hoarding Krugerrands since Nancy Pelosi hove into view, have I got good news for you! Marketwatch says gold's at $17,727 an ounce right now. Think of all the ammo and beans you can buy with a pound or two of your wife's melted jewelry today.
Into each life some rain must fall, though. I wonder what a gallon of gas is going to cost tomorrow now that a barrel of oil is worth $9228. I'd fill up today before they change the signs, if I were you. Marketwatch. For the Lulz.
When we were kids, we played Army Man. In the evenings, we watched Vic Morrow keep his head in Combat, and Christopher George go dunebuggying in Rat Patrol. Entertainment like that was everywhere, and every retaining wall in every driveway had imaginary Guns of Navarone atop it the day after we saw the movie. We'd gather up all our military-ish toy swag, pick sides, and wander the neighborhood sneaking up on each other and arguing over who shot whom. Nothing we had shot any sort of projectile, so there was nothing to do but argue; but we all wanted to die and fall to the ground in histrionic ways and writhe around a bit, so the arguments were mostly about who was "throwing" the war too easily to suit the other side. There was a dirty little secret of all such suburban war games of the sixties. We all wanted to be the Germans.
The Germans were cool. Exotic. The Americans were just our dads in olive drab. German uniforms were like a circus outfit compared to a reform school tie. Germans had those nifty beer bottle hand grenades, tanks named after panthers and tigers instead of anonymous generals, and those awesome grease guns that went BBBRRRRRPPPP when you let them off the chain. And besides, if you were the Germans, you were expected to lose and die and writhe on the ground in your death throes over and over and have all the fun.
The actual American military seems to have understood that the Germans had all the sexy stuff, and worked hard to remind the American troops that outre weapons, gaudy uniforms with lots of lightning bolts and skulls, and Roman salutes don't win wars. The American army was boring compared to the German army. Boring like Joe Louis fighting Joel Grey would be, that is. Workmanlike. Here's an interesting example of the mundane but necessary propaganda that reminded American GIs that the boring stuff works just fine.
Isn't it time for the New York Times to run another 10,000 word essay about how any minute everyone is going to flee the suburbs and flock to the cities, because we all know the quality of life is so low out there in the sticks?
