Fuck you, Maine

See also: Happy Homophobe Day!

Daily Dose of Angry

Instant Angry: Read this account of a recent town hall meeting on health care.

I mean, fuck.
Seriously?

Obama-as-Hitler posters? Someone yelling at the disabled lady whose insurance dropped her that “I shouldn’t have to pay for your health care”?

Are we really this ugly a nation?

Train Wreck Series Returns!

Hey, kids!

The series that brought you Miss South Carolina’s bumbling attempts to discuss foreign policy and Britney Spears’ drunk performance at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards is back, this time with Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice presidential nominee.

I have tried really, really hard to ignore Sarah Palin since the election ended and the immediate threat of her holding national office subsided, but today I have to make an exception because 1) she resigned from her post as governor of Alaska a full year and a half before the end of her term, and 2) she sounded completely bat shit crazy while she was doing it.

Go ahead. Watch it. You know you want to.

can we go back to sex and drugs?

The best Onion article of the year is in today’s online edition of the New York Times.

It’s about the current teenage hugging epidemic. And it’s fucking amazing.

It's 12:30pm. Do you know what your kids are doing?

Some highlights:

Girls embracing girls, girls embracing boys, boys embracing each other — the hug has become the favorite social greeting when teenagers meet or part these days.

Hugging appears to be a grass-roots phenomenon.

A measure of how rapidly the ritual is spreading is that some students complain of peer pressure to hug to fit in.

(And my personal favorite, from Noreen Hanjilian, principal of George G. White High School in Joisey): “It was needless hugging — they are in the hallways before they go to class. It wasn’t a greeting. It was happening all day.”

Supreme Fail.

The California Supreme Court has just decided that it’s fine for its legislature to pass laws drafted with the sole purpose of discriminating against people, in direct violation of the state constitution’s equal protection clause.

Meanwhile, on the federal stage, Obama named his Supreme Court Justice pick amidst conservative concerns that she will be inclined to “legislate morality from the bench.”

I think I’m going to throw up in my mouth.

the “t” word, or, that joke isn’t funny anymore

So, Wanda Sykes likened Rush Limbaugh to a terrorist at this year’s White House Annual Correspondents’ Dinner, and it’s unleashed a conservative media maelstrom about how inappropriate her comments were.

It was, on the other hand, okay when Limbaugh was making similar allusions about a presidential candidate in a decidedly un-comedic context during the election.

Cause that’s, you know. Different.

What you don’t know, hurting you

While all the clean energy folks were still recovering from their Obama-election hangovers, the Bush administration opened–and closed–a 30 day public comment period on a proposition to drill off the shores of Virginia.

The project is now underway.

This reminds me a little of the “public commenting period” earlier this year on a federal rule change that, among other things, aimed to redefine pregnancy as beginning at the point of conception. No one seemed to know about that one, either. I can’t really even begin to articulate how maddening it is that the public isn’t better made aware of these “public” vetting opportunities.

Maybe instead of covering shit like this, CNN and co. can include a section on their websites dedicated to listing rules and policies up for public comment and providing basic ‘how to’ instructions.

a month later

A month after the Election Heard Round the World, a few observations/comments/etc…

First off, I think Clinton was a smart choice for Secretary of State. Keep your friends close, your enemies closer. And don’t be afraid of smart people with strong opinions.

Which brings me to Obama’s appointments in general. He’s gotten a lot of flack for those he has made thus far: Too Clintonian, too bipartisan, too predicatable, et al. More than one headline has mocked the president-elect’s campaign mantra with headlines asking, “What change?” But, for what it’s worth, I think having a leader who is not afraid to give a platform to people who might not agree with him is a change–and one with a significance we should not underestimate.

There’s been a decrease in the blatantly racist comments that national radio show callers were making directly after the election. Instead, folks seem to be reverting back to veiling their racism under the guises of their “political beliefs,” “conservative values,” et al. I’m not sure this is progress. It was acutely horrible about hearing callers “blame” the election on “all those black people” who came out and voted–as though black people’s votes counting was a sneaky loophole or something–but when a statement is that obviously fucked up, it demands a response. The double-speak muckety muck is a lot easier to gloss over, ignore, and make excuses for. And that is not a good thing.

And, on a personal note, politics might still gut my family and leave its collective entrails dragging across the eastern seaboard before the next four (or eight) years are through. Gotta get me some armor…

makeover time!

“What?!” says Palin. “I don’t get to keep them?”

talking experience

In light of Rudy G’s recent assertions that Obama is the least experienced presidential nominee in the past century, I wanted to share a Huffington Post article from last month that compared Obama’s political experience leading up to his presidential nomination with that of our other presidents from the past 100 years…

The results?

Obama ends up smack in the middle of past century’s 17 presidents on the political-experience-o-meter, taking into account work as an elected official on the state level or higher. (He tied with Harding.) Some of the folks that fall behind him on the scale:

Ronald Reagan

Jimmy Carter

Harry Truman

Woodrow Wilson

Dwight Eisenhower

Herbert Hoover

William Taft

…and, of course, Georgie W.B.!

(a sidenote: none of the above had quite as sparse a resume as Sarah Palin. Just sayin’.)