Easy Peasy!

Everyone is agitating to have the troops brought home. Agreed, it will be a phenomenal savings to the taxpayer not to have to pay their salaries and purchase all that equipment.

Until the soldiers and armament factory workers  have to file for unemployment insurance.

* * * *

There is a new car designed by Volkswagen, and perhaps built in China, that travels 75 miles an hour and gets 258 mpg. It is available to the Chinese for $600 US currency. Of course it only carries one person and his toothbrush, but, still......... It will save gas but could $600 a car support a U.S. auto industry that employs thousands?

* * * *

Scrap health care, Medicare and Social Security. And then let the government house or bury all those who will litter the streets carrying their beggars' bowls.

Beware those bloviators seeking to replace President Obama with their simple solutions they say he is too dumb to understand.

Do you remember the story about The Monkey's Paw?



Badly Done, Queenie - Badly Done

Earlier this week I saw the film of our President toasting the Queen of England.

I've also seen reports that he committed a gaffe by toasting her while the God Save the Queen theme song was playing.

That was not a gaffe. We are not a country so steeped in archaic tradition that we cannot be natural, normal and spontaneous. Why should he have known better? That's their drummer, not ours.

I would think that a Queen, a queen of a country that used to call itself an empire (does it still?),would have the good grace to have eased whatever embarrassment a lesser man might have felt in not being "up" on the etiquette of that constipated society.

Standing there holding her stupid pocketbook like a bag lady, she could have added a little grace by looking at Obama and smiling.....or putting her hand on his arm in an understanding manner....or stopping the whole damned rigamarole, thanking him....and then giving a cue to restart the band. What would have happened? Armageddon?

I like tradition. There is comfort in familiarity. But, Jeez Louise, if a monarch can't take charge of  a minor infraction and add a little humanity, if not humility, to a situation, what an impotent office she holds.

Maybe Elizabeth II should be the last of a long line of totally useless royals who have been living off the English dole for more millennia than is good for a population.

After Qaddafi, the House of Windsor?

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"

I am beside myself with delight because I am now among the favored Internet users who operate a computer with a broad band connection.

This is my first entry in a week because it has rained every day and soaked my telephone wires so much that my dial-up was reduced to practically minus bps and I couldn't even sign on, much less access anything.

My gadget-loving son came to visit last weekend with his Verizon phone-price reader-dog whistle-encyclopedia-world atlas-place finder computer and sat next to me and my molasses-moving laptop and then smartly pulled up this blog on his pocket computer before I completed a click to sign on to my account, and I am in heaven.

When we called Verizon, we discovered they provided an 'island' of service between the Hardware River and Secretarys Road...  and that's my farm! I am now connected to the rest of the world with a magical thing called MiFi.

I love you Verizon.

And, to add a gob of whipped cream, nuts and a cherry, I've discovered Keith Olbermann has returned to my life.

While his TV program on Current TV doesn't begin until June 20, he can be found here:
http://current.com/shows/countdown/

Now, if only I can see Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Newtie competing for the GOP primary debates, my cup will runneth over.

Take These People, Please!

Two of the cleverest Rapture ideas I've heard:

Someone suggests getting a bunch of old shoes from the Salvation Army and then filling them with dry ice and leaving them around town so the Rapture devotees who see abandoned shoes with vapor rising from them will be disappointed that they were not among the chosen.

The other is more than an idea; it's a going business. Some enterprising folks have agreed to take the pets of the prospective departees....for a price. No money back guarantee.

I suppose making fun of these poor creatures is beyond our/my ability to resist. But underlying the hilarity of it all is a very depressing truth: Too many of our number have been left in the Dark Age.

Most of the "enlightened" have been reluctant to disabuse those still shackled by the superstitious folderol dished out by the priesthoods of various sects because they think "believing" is a crutch that should not be removed. That assessment certifies that religion services the crippled! The crippled in mind and spirit.

Some....yea, many.....will think this is cruel. For years I, too, thought it was unkind to criticize the religious and was always reluctant to let any "believers" see how foolish I thought they were.

But no more. I have come  to realize that you do a disservice to people by letting them wallow in nonsense. And, even more debilitating to society, allow them to spread this nonsense to future generations as if it were a gift instead of the curse it is.

How I wish all believers could be lifted from the earth to a "better place". That would assure us that OUR world would be a better place.

Our Fun is Done Already?

Can it be less than a week ago that I celebrated Newtie flinging himself onto the field of battle with all the self-possession of someone who feels (felt) entitled to be President of these United States? Hell, compared to the "Trump-eting Hare", maybe he is (was) a viable candidate. We are talking about the Republican ticket.

But now it appears it's all over....except for the shouting. And all he did was speak the truth. Dismantling Medicare and Social Security while leaving billionaires and mega-corporations off limits as fellow funders of those things society requires, is a radically damaging game plan for the country. Any country, any time, any where, any how!

Why is that not obvious to Boehner and Cantor? Have they never heard of Sisyphus?

All the chortling and chuckling from the left has to irritate the hell out of serious minded conservatives who thought even a twice divorced, thrice married hypocrite who was a former House Speaker might lend an air of verisimilitude to an otherwise unprepossessing field of potential candidates.

Not so.

The field remains delightfully unprepossessing.

 I just hope it hasn't discouraged Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin or Rick Santorum.  They may be my last hopes for a few months of Grade A entertainment.

Oh, The Fun We Will Have!

I am sitting here watching Morning Joe and up pops Newtie's face announcing his willingness to be what is in my opinion witting fodder for the GOP's limp cannon.

He has told us so often, and some political pundits have confirmed it, he is an intellectual. Perhaps he thinks he is the only one in the field with more brains than Obama. More fool, he. Nobody on the political horizon has more brains than our fearless leader.

Mika is now asking what the music is in the background of his commercial. She thinks she hears something reminiscent of the Gipper. I hear the theme music from Jaws.

But the best observation comes from Mike Barnicle who is saying, "He is a delusional loser with an intellectual chip on his shoulder."

Beyond that he is a hypocrite of such a proportion as to make the Pacific Ocean a puddle. Well, maybe that's a little excessive....but so is his reach.

Run, Newtie, run. This is going to be fun.

How Do You Fix the Foolish?

I've spent the last week reading a variety of reactions to the May 1 events in Pakistan and, while there can be little doubt that Obama has chalked up a mighty big accomplishment, the grudging admiration and the insistence that Georgie Porgie be given a lion's share of the credit, leaves me almost permanently gob-smacked.

Instructing has never been my strong suit, and I'm equally challenged in the convincing department. Therefore, I am totally frustrated when faced with people possessed of an unreasoning determination to see everything through a prism of willing ignorance.

The man dressed in the redneck uniform of camouflage jacket with John Deere on the visor of his cap standing on the other side of the gas pump on Thursday, swearing at the price of the gas and blaming our national debt entirely on Obama, could not be reached with facts. Why did I try? Sheesh!

The woman who considered Dubya's baseball pitch across the plate right after bin Laden destroyed half of lower Manhattan a far more bracing antidote for what ails us than President Obama's elimination of the murdering bastard.

These are people at least marginally conscious and whom you would think would be easy to reach with information...but they are not. They are not because as my sweet and gentle stepfather frequently quoted when faced with an obdurate fool, "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still."

What does it take to change the will of the stupid, the bigoted and the uninformed? How do you even broach a mind fixed in such rigidity?  It appears it can happen only through forcefed education since we don't seem to have a country inhabited by those who seek information.... beyond what entertains them.

How do priests and the Glenn Becks make people believe unquestioningly all that religious offal, and teachers can't even get them to learn how to read and spell and think?

Until we have an educated population, surely even the dream of peace and prosperity is unattainable.

Cream vs. Petard

There has been a surfeit of news today....or perhaps I should say "opinions." The quality of these opinions has been both funny and depressing.

I, like far too many of those in government and in the media, don't always know what I am talking about.

However, when I blunder into know-nothing land, it makes not one whit of  difference to anything or anyone. Therefore, the perils of this kind of detour hinders me not.

Unfortunately, neither does it hinder far too many of our pols whose only goal seems to be not rising to the top like cream, but, instead,  hoisting themselves skyward on their own petard.

Not an admirable objective, but this mode of transport - by being  noisier and smellier -puts them front and center without expending anything but hot air.

Dear Mr. Obama

I am writing this to you
And I hope that you will read it so you'll know
My heart beats like a hammer
And I stutter and I stammer
Every time I see you at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
I guess I'm just another fan of yours
And I thought I'd write and tell you so.

You made me love you
I didn't wanna do it, I didn't wanna do it.
You made me love you
And all the time you knew it, I guess you always knew it.
You made me happy, sometimes you made me glad.
But there were times, sir, you made me feel so sad.
You made me sigh 'cause
I didn't wanna tell you, I didn't wanna tell you
I think you're grand, that's true
Yes I do, 'deed I do, you know I do.
I must tell you what I'm feeling
The very mention of your name
Sends my heart reeling.
You know you made me love you!

Aw, gee, Mr. Obama, I don't wanna bother you! Guess you got a lotta girls that tell you the same thing. And if you don't wanna read this, well, you don't have to. But I just had to tell you about the time I saw you at the Democratic Convention. That was the first time I ever saw you, and I knew right then you were the nicest fella in politics!

I guess it was 'cause you acted so, well so natural like - not like a real politician at all, but just like any fella you'd meet at Harvard or at a rally. Then one time I saw you in a debate with Hillary Clinton, and I had to cry a little 'cause I loved you so much and you looked like you weren't going to win  - not 'till the end of the campaign, anyway.

 And then one time I saw you in person. You were making a personal appearance at the theatre, and I was standing there when you got out of your car, and you almost knocked me down! Oh - but it wasn't your fault! Naw, I was in the way. But you looked at me, and you smiled. Yeah! You smiled right at me as if you meant it, and I cried all the way home.

Me just 'cause you smiled at me for being in your way! Aw, I'll never forget it, Mr. Obama. Honest. You're my favorite President. (singing)

I don't care what happens, let the whole world stop.
As far as I'm concerned, you'll always be the top,
'cause you know you made me love you.

More lyrics: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/j/judy_garland/#share