Day after day signs of insanity continue to emanate from the Grand Old Party… Could all this be deliberate? Is the party deliberately trying to throw the 2012 election? Author Cliff Schecter (The Real McCain, 2008) says that’s exactly what’s going on in a think piece posted at Al Jazeera. It’s worth reading just to have the pleasure of seeing Rep. Darrell Issa called a car-thief turned car-alarm gazillionaire.
Right wing inspiration for today: “Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours.”-–Grover Cleveland
Left wing inspiration for today: Mick Jagger, BB King and a certain presidential candidate sing ‘Sweet Home Chicago’. (Sneak preview of PBS Special!)
Then there’s Candidate Ric Santorum’s warning that Satan is coming to take us all away. Or Mitt Romney’s Hail Mary tax cut for himself that he’s expected to unveil today, one that has his fans over National Review gushing about Free Market forces and how the future will now be just so wonderful. Ron Paul’s tv ads in Michigan are being called out as a stealth push for Romney. Oh, and there’s another GOP debate tonight. Each one of these debates seems to have the effect of further eroding the “GOP Brand” among voters…
But the real corker of the day has to be the full blown emergence of the right wing meme that sees the Girl Scouts as a threat to society. This has been percolating for months now, with Slate’s backgrounder being a good place to start learning the roots of this insanity.
This kind of insanity is not limited to the national arena. One need look no further than over at SDRostra, where the San Diego Tax Fighters’ fearless leader, one Richard Rider, recently had a cow upon learning that over half (59%) of all women under 30 having babies are doing so bereft of the sacred institution of marriage. In Rider’s delusional universe, government workers are standing by just outside maternity wards waiting to hand out welfare checks. (Even the Newser link he offers up as proof doesn’t try to make that claim.)
Or you could have joined the lunchtime crowd at the Country Club of Rancho Bernardo where candidates for the 52nd Congressional seat appeared together yesterday. Tea Party/GOP challenger John Stahl sought to equate government pensions with Beelzebub, criticizing Dem Lori Saldana for her as-yet-to-be-realized $4800 annual pension, while incumbent GOPer Brian Bilbray characterized Dem Scott Peters as the living embodiment of all the evils of the present City employee pension plan, saying “Why did 145,000 San Diegans sign a petition for a chance to reverse what Mr. Peters did?”. If it were only that simple…
Devil in the details… CityBeat dispatched writer D.A. Kolodenko to search OB drinking establishments for a drinkable martini on Valentines Day. The results proved conclusively that no such concoction exists. The only surprising thing about the story was that they even tried. Martini? Ocean Beach? They’d be better off trolling for a Reds/Olde English 800 combo in the Rite Aid parking lot.
Local events unrelated to Satan (as far as we know)… Vic Moraga & John Miller will be the featured performers at the OB Farmers Market today. Ocean Beach Geriatric Surf Club member (and occasional OBRag contributor) Mike James is one year older today. He informs us that his partying will be constrained by the fact that he no longer lives within stumbling distance of Newport Avenue.
For those of you who think this Satan thing is a stretch… Mother Jones has come up with a fantastic quiz/gamethat asks you to choose between Rick Santorum and Megadeth lyrics. Truth be told, I only got a 50% rating. Give it a spin!
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I scored 70% on the MoJo quiz. Who knew that Dave Mustaine of all people was a right wing whack job?
Just watched my “favorite” Megadeth song video again “Sweating Bullets ” (I say “favorite” in quotes since it’s really the only Megadeth song I can name or even know). The dude has problems. Put it this way: He was such a mess that his Metallica bandmates literally dumped him on the side of the road when they kicked him out of the band. He was passed out in the back of the van they were traveling in and they left him. No “Sorry, Dave, we’re going in a different direction,” or “Dave, you’re fired.” They just threw his unconscious body out of the van and bailed. True story.