Category Archives: Just Sayin’

09.10.17
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Stormy Weather

I’m an awful person.

When I heard that right wing radio host gadfly/gazillionaire Rush Limbaugh called the dire warnings about Hurricane Irma part of a liberal conspiracy to further discussion on climate change – and then decided to evacuate his fat ass from his southern Florida home several days later on Thursday – all I could think of was: Keep your fat ass at home.

You know I’m right

Then I heard about right wing author gadfly/gazillionaire Ann Coulter’s tweet a week ago:

And all I could think of then was: Take you and your black Lycra cocktail dress down to Rush’s house in coastal Florida and let’s see how adept the two of you really are at navigating shark and ALLIGATOR infested waters, yard sale Barbie. (Note: Thanks, Tina Fey).

GURL YES

If this weren’t enough, former Growing Pains star and evangelical something or other Kirk Cameron was then quoted as saying this about the back-to-back appearances of both Hurricanes Harvey and Irma:

God “causes [storms] to happen for punishment, or to water His land and demonstrate His faithful love…What this should be doing for all of us is causing us to remember that it’s God who supplies our life, breath and everything else so that you and I would reach out to Him…So think about that, maybe share that with your kids when they ask why this is happening. 

STOP THE MADNESS

I knew there was a reason I didn’t have kids. I’d never be able to explain to them with a straight face that hundreds of people died because the Lord overwatered his flowerbeds.   Nor could I ever be able to explain how I managed to get put in jail for wishing painful venereal warts on a mentally imbalanced former child star on Facebook. (Note: Both he and I, since his pronouncement was in a much read and re-circulated Facebook post).

By the way, did you know that hurricanes are named by something called the World Meteorological Organization and that the names are done in alphabetical order but skip the letters q, u, x, y and z? This accounts for the seeming randomness of Harvey and Irma while causing people like myself too many sleepless nights wondering just what the hell is wrong with the names Zelda, Yanni or Ursula.   (#TooLiberal?)

OK now I’ve gone off the deep end

When I found myself wondering desperately about hurricane names my husband instantly got the answer for me. He’s quick on these things and it’s one of the thousands of the reasons I married him – he either always has or can always find an answer to any question that I ask. This is no small feat, as you can imagine.

Which is why it troubled me when out of nowhere he eventually blew his stack about the right wing doubter responses to hurricanes and their relation to climate change:

What do they need… the Four Horsemen on horseback?

This is another reason I married him. When he blows his stack it is short and often includes some random biblical reference to their jugulars that I could never think of in a million years B.C.

This is love.

I hate to admit that I am now living in a me against them world but I am now living in a me against them world. I mean, there is so little attention to facts and logic I often find myself screaming into my pillow or out towards anyone who will listen. And that’s because most of what’s said is all so provocative and vindictive just for vindictiveness’ sake – fueled by dollops of insurgency, emotion and endless disguised attempts/quests to reign in popularity… said the man who has written a weekly blog for the last five years for no other reason than to… Well, let’s not get off topic.

Truth be known, I have never actively tried to advocate for one side. What one finds as one gets older and has had decades of therapy with at least a few insights, is that the only side one can truly advocate for is one’s personal point of view. Take this little nugget from liberal America which (yes – surprise, surprise) really pissed me off.

Say it ain’t so, chairy!!

Recently, Senator Bernie Sanders went on television (Note: Okay, it was Stephen Colbert’s show) to refute thoughts Hillary Clinton had written about her 2016 campaign for both the Democratic nomination for president and as the Democratic nominee for president.   Deciding for the umpteenth time not to verbally get into the grimy details of a policy debate, Sen. Sanders instead responded to her words with this dismissive retort:

Look, Secretary Clinton ran against the most unpopular candidate in the history of this country—and she lost, and she was upset about that.

Of course, this begs the question that it was Bernie Sanders that first lost to Hillary Clinton. Which most certainly makes him more of a loser than she is because by logic there is only one candidate more unpopular than the winner of the presidency – and that is the person who lost the presidency to him. The candidate Sen. Sanders managed to LOSE TO at the ballot box.

Just move along now please

I don’t know about you but these days I am indeed loaded for bear – liberal, conservative or anywhere in between. And I don’t even know how to shoot a gun. Well, one with bullets anyway.

We’re all finding our ways to cope.

Eurythmics – “Here Comes the Rain Again”

08.27.17
by

Are You There God? It’s Me, Chair

If I were a religious person, or at this point believed in God at all, I might consider this weekend’s —

  1. flooding destruction of the Texas coast (Note: And now further inland),
  2. pardoning of a convicted racial profiling former sheriff by a bitter, angry and at best unqualified US president and
  3. banning of transgender people from the military randomly despite any real support for it from our military leaders or objective evidence that it is needed —

The beginning of a MASSIVE DIVINE PUNISHMENT for the United States.

Heck, maybe I’ll join a church, rejoin a synagogue, or start my own religion just so I can come up with some irrefutable reasons.   

The Patron Saint of the Chair

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if I’m not a somewhat spiritual person. I often think there has got to be something more than what we can all see in any moment (especially this moment) and some mysterious order to a universe that has personally given me pizza, Bette Midler, and the ability to block it all out by playing electronic Scrabble with myself.

… and Jon Hamm and puppies

On the other hand…I have five fingers (as the desperate vaudevillian said as he tried to make a joke when, alas, he had clearly run out of them for a demanding audience).

If you’re anything like me – and perhaps if you are reading this you are in danger of being so – you can’t for the life of you or anyone else rationally understand why Sheriff Joe could get convicted in court some weeks ago and this weekend be rewarded for his crimes of putting brown-skinned people (many of whom were guilty of nothing at all except being non-white) in holding pens where the temperatures were upward of 140 degrees and the stench of their own feces and menstrual blood wafted in the air all around them day after day, week after week and, perhaps, longer.

Where do I even start? #horrified

Here is the ACLU’s list of some of Sheriff Joe’s crimes against humanity.

So how can it be that some minority kid who smoked a little pot or sassed back a law officer sits incarcerated for years?

Who would have thought former George W. Bush speechwriter and leading conservative thinker at the Atlantic, David Frum, could explain it to me.

I’ll wear nice pants

The link is here and you should read it. But Frum’s primary point is that Trump has chosen to do the Sheriff Joe pardon and the military transgender ban precisely this weekend because it is under the cover of the floods, hurricane, and who knows, by the time you read this (pestilence?), in Texas as a way to divert your attention from the heinousness of his actions. He argues it is a sort of a reverse showmanship –- rather than trying to get your attention he is seeking to hide it via the bigger event.

Of course, Trump being Trump, that’s not totally it. It’s also a big F-K YOU to anyone who dares to reel him in, challenge him, disagree with him, unseat or even partially bask in his glory. I’ve felt this for quite a while. But in his writing this weekend Frum quotes the tweet of the editor of a conservative website and states the case far more eloquently than I do.

Still, who would have also ever thought 10 years ago – when I proclaimed to anyone who would or wouldn’t listen that Dubya would be THE WORST PREISDENT IN HISTORY by a mile in my lifetime and two lifetimes after mine – that the very man who put so many of those empty, callow words in his mouth could be so in sync with what I was thinking?

The next logical conclusion might be well, if that’s possible perhaps things are not as bad as the avalanche of massive divine punishment you are cleverly predicting by not predicting, and thus absolving yourself of all responsibility for putting it out there?

Where I’m at right now

Of course, I have no way of knowing, not being a person of God or any particular faith. Though I am culturally Jewish and reacted mightily to the chants of “Jews Will Not Replace Us” by those protestors just two weeks ago in Charlottesville, VA.   That place where a woman was killed by one of them. The them being part of the group Herr Trump (aka The American Fuhrer) defended as “many good people” several days later.

Too much to call him Herr Trump (aka The American Fuhrer)? Or too soon? Well, let’s let God be the judge on that one.   I’m willing to give Him/Her/It the Power on this one just so I don’t have to decide.

Insert your pop culture god of choice

What will be decided in the ensuing months and year (or two) is just how much help our Electoral College Potus received from the Russians in order to get elected in the first place and how many laws he and his minions broke in the process, if any. There will also be verdicts on the man’s (Fuhrer’s?) businesses, taxes, financial dealings and perhaps even sexual habits. Given all of the accusations in that infamous dossier, one can be hopeful.

You know the one…. (image care of the brilliant Full Frontal with our girl Samantha Bee)

That’s because you can’t hide the truth from God or a special prosecutor like Bob Mueller.   Unless, of course, you are crazy enough go nuclear and….

Okay, let’s not even joke about the possibilities of that. The one thing we know about Trumpian diversions is that they ARE always done under the cloak of protecting himself, his supporters and every member of his extended family. Truly, there is not an underground shelter big enough. Not even North Korea could build that.

God willing.

Creedence Clearwater Revival – “Bad Moon Rising”