A Few Thoughts On Post-Election Recuperation………

A friend just sent me a link to a truly sad and disturbing 24 minute breakdown in response to the election results.  I skimmed through the comment section prior to viewing it, like I usually do, just to see if there were any key things I should listen for, then hit start.  It took the best part of the morning to get through it.

Wow.

When I started posting my own thoughts online I had the quite natural fear that if I opened myself up to strangers, I would bring ridicule on myself.  I was new at blogging.  I was a recovering Stepford Republican turned Liberal.  Of course, being me, I decided p-fooey on it, and jumped in with both feet.  What I didn’t expect was to find myself enjoying it so much.  Feedback, whether good, bad, or indifferent, is endlessly interesting to me.  I have met some fascinating people, and gained some perspective I lacked after reading their blogs.  I am also endlessly awed by the quantity of talented, interesting, & humorous people blogging and posting nowadays.  Y’all so very often say exactly what I was thinking, but you just say it so darn much better.

That being said, I wanted to say three things to the world out there.

For my small circle of readers and commenters, thank you.  Y’all keep me coming back.  I post what I post because I believe in it, and I stand behind it, but having even one person who actually reads what I write elevates me from crazy cat lady pushing a wire cart and muttering to very, very amateur writer.  It’s a small distinction, but an important one to me.  As of this morning, I have yet to become an object of ridicule or major harassment, and thank you all for that, as well.  I have been fortunate in my freedom from trolls or cyber ugliness to any great extent.

For the unfortunate Nebraska blogger who has inadvertently become an object of lampooning and skewering humor…..I am sorry, ma’am.  You obviously believed very much in what you were doing, and you clearly put a lot of work and heart into it.  It goes without saying that I completely disagree with most of what you were working for, but respect is still possible even when disagreement exists.  I think you are wrong, but I also think those lambasting you aren’t much better.

For everyone, everywhere…….  I understand that many are still smarting from a vicious election cycle.  Even some outside the US were pulled in and became invested in the shenanigans and mud slinging.  The Conservatives have a great deal of work ahead of them if they want to tame and reclaim their party to make it a viable contender.  We need them to step up and do just that, because in its current state, the Republican party is a mess.  There was a good reason our founders wove checks and balances into our government.  It ain’t perfect, but it keeps the crazies from completely taking over.

Thank goodness for that, because the last few years we came perilously close.  We need more than one cohesive and functional party to represent us.  We need the discord, the arguments, the bargaining, and the pressure from others to compromise.  I understand the tendency of  some to poke fun at the losing end.  Call it schadenfreude, gloating, or the good old standard neener-neener, let’s get it out of our system quickly and extend a hand.  The sooner we stop trading insults, taunting, and anger, the sooner we can start working together with the rational folks in every party to cleanse our government of the remaining whack-a-doodles and obstructionists.

A Plea For Reason………

For those readers in the US, I have been watching media sites since last night, and I am disheartened by your unrelenting attitude of petulance and  hateful jibes.  I have something to say, directly to all of y’all…………

C’mon, guys. Can we wind up the self pitying, sad, apocalyptic, and frankly mean posts, already?

I have some news for you.

My president won. Not because of Latinos, although they helped. Not because of enlightened women, although we helped. Not because of those in favor of freedom of choice, religion, and true liberty (for everyone instead of one cherry-picked group), although they helped.

No one minority or special interest group did this. We did it together. We read, we watched, and we listened. We talked, blogged, and spread our message far and wide.

There was no conspiracy. There was no blackout. There was simply a very large segment of the population who wanted to move forward. We don’t want war. We don’t want to pay higher & higher taxes so that the insanely wealthy can pay an even smaller percentage than they do now. We want accountability. We want progress.

We want the right to live without being micromanaged, and we want the same right for everyone else….including those who are currently continuing to throw mud and vitriol at us.

No, we aren’t lazy. No, we don’t want handouts. We want a safety net, for ourselves, and for everyone else. We care about all of our fellow citizens. We want to cooperate, and we want to see bipartisanship.

Let’s do this. Let’s do great things for all of us and stop rolling in the mud.

My President is your President. He is OUR President, so let’s show him the respect he earned and deserves.

Props to you, President Obama!

Congratulations, Mr. President.  I am proud of you, proud of us, and proud to be an American.

Oh, Sanity And Reason, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Us?

A small note on my unusual silence the last couple of weeks…….

It isn’t like I haven’t had scores of things I wanted to shout about.  There are plenty.  Too many, in fact.  I seem to have become buried alive in election cycle stress syndrome.  I can’t open any of my multitudinous (I love that word, and never get to use it) news and political sites without being assaulted by an avalanche of offensive and terrifying articles, posts, quotes, soundbites  and developments.  I have been hiding, frankly.  I’m kinda’ afraid if I begin to talk about any current events, I’ll deteriorate into full-on Southern-belle profanity.  For those who know southern ladies, y’all know there is no language on this Earth quite like ours when we are good and worked up.

I would like to pose a few questions to the world at large though…….

Who the hell are these undecided voters, and what, pray tell, is the cause of their indecision?  Much like Sheldon Cooper, I have the urge to ask them if they have recently received a sudden blow to the head.

Your candidate is offensive, pretentious,  obnoxious, and rude.  He is boorish and totally impolite.  He is completely disrespectful.  Now, come the second and third debates ( and VP debate) and the first thing out of y’all’s mouths is that the VP and POTUS are RUDE?  Wah.  Boo hoo.  I have news for you guys.  Lies, misconstrued facts, and politicizing events for your own selfish ends and gain–especially when you were pointedly asked not to by surviving family members in the case of Ambassador Stevens–deserve no polite treatment or mollycoddling.  What pathology do you guys suffer from, that you all think you are entitled (see what I did there) to set the terms for the way everyone else behaves?  Only from the rabid right do we see people whacking others over the head with metaphorical shovels while screaming “Why are you persecuting us?”

DOMA is finally getting put where it deserved to be from the first moment it was thought up…..in the trash can.  Case by case, court by court, I love to see it go.  When it finally disappears for good, and when lovers all through our nation are ultimately able to love and be loved by the partner of their choice, how precisely will that affect ANY of you?  The sacrosanct institution of marriage in our modern times is beset right, left, and sideways by unfaithfulness, separation, and divorce.  In a great many cases, multiple-remarriage and divorce.  Why deny same sex couples the right to be as happy as all of us straight couples, since we are all clearly ambassadors of nuptial Utopian living?

In reference to the absolutely staggering amount of propaganda, lies, filth, perversion, stupidity, and insanity directed at women and their right to make choices about their bodies and health (specifically reproductive health) :  Piss off.  I can’t be any more clear than that.  You people are insane.  You are not rational.  You are frankly frightening.  An incredibly astute gentleman once said “I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”  Thank you, George Bernard Shaw, for reminding me that you can’t reason with some people.

Yes, I know the last was not a question, but it was certainly a statement I felt needed saying.

I look around and wonder, what on Earth must other countries think of us?  I suspect that if the nations of the world were a family reunion, we would be the inappropriate uncle who wears his underwear outside his pants and speaks in non-sequiturs that make everyone uncomfortable.

Sigh………..

Presidential Town Hall Debate October 16, 2012

For anyone who missed all or part of the Presidential debate, here is a link to it in its entirety.

Presidential Town Hall Debate October 16, 2012

Vice Presidential Debate October 11, 2012

For anyone who might have missed it, here is a link to tonight’s debate in its entirety.

Look Out, Ryan’s Getting His Math On…….

 

There seems to be a slight gap in your addition there, guys.

 

Go, Bill………

Another great blog which is always worth a read.   Great post about the post-Clinton speech ripples currently moving through the right-wing propaganda machine, with a link to the speech for those who wish to re-view it or somehow missed it.

Southern Beale

President Clinton’s speech last night was amazing and really, there’s not much more I can say than that. If you missed it or want to see it again, I’ve posted the video below.

One thing that annoys the hell out of me is the way our punditry has to do its “procedural voyeurism” crap, pull Oz’s curtain aside and talk about why Clinton gave the speech: to preserve Hillary’s 2016 ambitions, to preserve his own legacy, to protect “the brand,” blah blah. God, that is so condescending to American viewers! It’s like saying, “Hey you rubes, here’s what’s really going on, you were just too stupid to get it.” A big chunk of the post-speech chatter on cable news was like this. I wish there had been more focus on what Clinton actually said.

Sigh.

What’s really funny is seeing the full meltdown last night’s speech caused in the…

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Thank You, Bill…….

It seems such a rare thing to see anyone of note from Arkansas doing anything positive, or that generates good press, that I simply wanted to give respect to our man Bill.  His DNC speech was excellent, and tonight, at least, I can go to bed with my head held high, because he is one of ours.  You rocked it, sir.

Cringe-worthy, Yes…..But Mostly Sad……..

I avoided watching the RNC live because I knew ahead of time it would only make me yell at the television.  My kiddos already probably think I am goofy enough without watching mom yell “AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!” at a tv, I think.

Once I started hearing all the buzz, though, naturally I had to check out what the fuss was about.  Oh, Clint.  Bless your heart.  Did you learn nothing from watching Charlie Sheen self destruct in front of the world?

I positively hurt for you while watching your surreal and frankly odd speech.  I grew up loving your gruff, no-nonsense characters in movies from The Beguiled to 2 Mules For Sister Sarah.  As I got older and began to follow your politics I seldom agreed with you but still respected you as a man true to his convictions.

This, though, was just dreadful.  I was embarrassed for you, and I can only imagine how you must feel in the backlash with senility jokes pouring in from every side.  No-one should have their deterioration on display like that.  It really isn’t funny.  It calls to my mind the descent of my grandmother, little by little, until she became almost a  caricature of the woman I had known by the end.

I am a little sadder today.  A man I have respected for a great many years, an icon of my movie watching youth, a man who (even when I abhorred his political ideology) stood for  his beliefs unspooled in front of all of us.

Sigh.