Monthly Archives: July 2012

July 19, 2012 · 0:00

You Heard it Here First

Someday, you guys will be considered pioneers.  The first know-it-alls.  The first to proclaim to the world that I am a sentient being.  (Or is it that I am a “senting” being in the sense that I can smell a rat?  Or maybe that I am a dog.  Whatever.)  You all will be among the first to realize that I am a genius.

Everyone else had forgotten her.  Put her out of their minds as she stayed strangely silent.  Unusually speechless.  Not at all noteworthy.  Or, perhaps she was just that tree that falls in the woods that nobody heard.

Huh?

She’s back ….

Google Image

Yup, Michele Bachmann is in the news again — saying inappropriate things about other people.

In the last couple of days, she’s said stuff that’s even gotten Speaker John Boehner, among others, trying to distance himself from her craziness.

Here’s a smidge of a write up from the SCTimes (that’s the St. Cloud Minnesota paper for those of you who aren’t up on all your acronyms):

Rep. Michele Bachmann had made fresh allegations of ties between an Islamist movement and Rep. Keith Ellison, even as Bachmann’s fellow Republicans increasingly condemn her calls to investigate the movement’s influence within the U.S. government.

In an interview with radio host Glenn Beck today, Bachmann said Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, “has a long record of being associated with … the Muslim Brotherhood.”

This was, of course, after Michele also claimed that Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, was an infiltrator of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Does she have proof?  Of course not.  She doesn’t need proof.  She has faith!

But those meanies who are criticizing Michele, well, they don’t understand her like I do.   Those folks, like so many others, were not followers of FiftyFourAndAHalf back when I explained Michele’s problem to the world.  So they just don’t know Michele’s secret.  They don’t understand her the way I understand her.  And the way you understand her if you were one of the three people who had actually read my blog one year ago, when I explained just what happens to Michele Bachmann sometimes.

Sigh.

So here it is again.  There are of course some differences between now and then.  But please — don’t make me repeat this next summer.

From July 21, 2011 — I give you the explanation you’ve been waiting for.

TWINSIES

Me and Michele Bachmann are twinsies!  And gosh I’m excited to tell you about it.  Especially since I just learned it was true!  We share something truly special.  It’s the big story in today’s news!

Well, there are the regular, ordinary things we have in common.  We’re both women, we’re both interested in politics, and we both love to pledge allegiance to the flag!  What could be more fun at a slumber party?  What’s more, we both believe in and even PRACTICE marriage.  I would bet the interest on the national debt, though, that my husband isn’t gay.  Now that we’ve all met Michele’s, I don’t think many folks would bet that hers isn’t.  So she has lots of time for sleep-overs.

Anyway, the thing we both have most in common are migraines!  Did you read about hers?  Well I get them too!  And I can tell that they affect us both the same way.  So we all need to feel really bad that we’ve been so hard on her.  I know I do.  Because this diagnosis answers a lot of questions for me.

You see, when I get a migraine, I don’t hide in the dark under a pillow.  I don’t cringe in agony.  I don’t stay home from work, shirking all my responsibilities, waiting for time and pain to pass.

Nope.  I get stupid.

I wish I got “dumb” as in “mute.”  Then I wouldn’t look so, well, dumb.  But I don’t.   I talk even though I develop a really-not-funny-and-don’t-you-dare-laugh-at-me linguistic problem.  It’s called transient aphasia, and sometimes it comes instead of the headache.  The wrong word comes out of my mouth.  And the word that comes out isn’t even close to the one I meant to say.

For example, sometimes I tell my friends that I have a “microwave” when I’m trying to say I have a “migraine.”  They get confused.

Clearly, my new twinsie, Michele, has aphasia, too.  And since we share migraine symptoms — we’ll be BFFs!

Think about it – it must be true.  There are so many examples!  Like when she said that the first shot in the Revolutionary War was fired in “New Hampshire”?  She clearly knew that it was fired in Taxachussetts – she just had a migraine!  And you thought she was dumb.

Or when she was naming Founding Fathers, she knew that she wanted to just say “John Adams” but “Quincy” just jumped right there in the middle.  So everybody thought that she thought that John Quincy Adams was a Founding Father.  Of course she knew he was still a mere lad at the time of the Revolution, she just couldn’t say it right.  And you thought she didn’t know the names of the Founding Fathers.

And when she said that those same Founding Fathers fought tirelessly against slavery.

Clearly, she gets migraines like mine a lot.

Poor Michele.  Not everybody understands her.  Not everybody believes her.  Not everybody stops up their mouths to keep from laughing aloud when she speaks.

But I do.  Well, I do now.

So here is my pledge.  If my new BFF, Michele Bachmann, becomes President, I promise to have lots of sleep-overs at her house.  That way I’ll be sure to be with her when she acts all Commander-In-Chief-y, and needs to order the troops during a nuclear confrontation.  And when she needs to say

“STAND DOWN!”

I’ll make sure she doesn’t accidentally say

“FIRE!”

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Filed under Elections, Humor, Hypocrisy, Law, Politics, Stupidity

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July 17, 2012 · 0:00

Garbage In – Garbage Out

My bloggin’ buddie Ben Mitchell has done a series of posts that are really helpful for those awful doubts all of us who like to write have in spades.  Ben’s latest post, My Writing is of the Highest Quality made me think of this story.

*     *     *

We’ve all had them.  The Boss from Hell.  Anna was mine.

Thirty years ago I worked for a woman who was known to swallow subordinates.  People who worked for her often left the state just to get away from her.  That’s how I got away, and I started a trend, actually.

Anna was smart, dedicated, a work-a-holic.  She expected perfection.  Documents were edited by four or five people, proofread by everyone from the most senior lawyer on down to the lowliest paralegal (me).  Nothing could go out to our clients with a substantive mistake, a grammatical error, an incorrect comma or extra space between words.  Worse, Anna didn’t mince words.  She didn’t spare feelings.  Working for Anna was a daily “sink or swim” situation.  And she always seemed to want to fill your pockets with rocks.

Still, for me, the job was a gift.  I had been working as a legal secretary, a job I hated.  But, the head partner of the department thought I was funny (which as we all know correlates with being incredibly intelligent).  So he offered me a promotion, asked if I would be interested in taking a job as a paralegal, a “professional.”  I would be part of the team of professionals in the legislative and regulatory division of a law firm.  I would learn all about Washington from the inside.

I would get paid less, work longer hours, and get no overtime.  What a deal!

I snapped it up though.  Because a big part of it was learning and the rest was writing.  Writing boring, humorless stuff, yes.  But writing is writing.  And getting paid to write?  Well, it doesn’t get much better than that, does it?

But Anna was unenthusiastic.  She didn’t want me.  She didn’t want to have someone else, even her boss, choose her assistant.  But we were stuck with each other.

It took five years for her to laugh at one of my jokes.  But I digress.

So I became a legislative assistant on environmental issues.  My job was to analyze legislation, attend hearings, know what all the different Senators and Congressmen thought about legislation, predict what would happen to a bill.  And I wrote memos to our clients to enlighten them.

But first they had to get past Anna.  The clients, they were easy.  The boss?  She was damn hard.

She didn’t mince words.  She tore apart sentences, decimated analyses.  She always knew more about the issue and the Congress and what position each member was taking than I did.  It was, well, challenging.  And annoying.  It was often hard not to collapse in angry tears.

But for the most part, I understood that I was getting the best training I could get.  How many of you have had each and every word you wrote for 10 years brutally dissected?  I did.  And it was never pretty.  But I learned.

Still, even a person like me who desperately needed that job has her limits.  And I reached them when, during one period, Anna would inexplicably throw my draft memos back at me saying “WHAT IS GARBAGE???!!!”  This question was not good for my ego.

I couldn’t quit, I needed the job.  I couldn’t go over her head, because, well, I like to fight my own battles.  But clearly, I needed to do something.

So I rooted around in the files until I found a memo Anna herself had written about one of my issues.  It was years old, but the factual information was still spot on.  I needed to change a couple of little things, the Senate Bill number, the names of a few of the Senators, and voila!  Anna had written my memo for me.

When I gave it to her, Anna shouted “What is this GARBAGE?”

“Actually, Anna,” I responded, “You were so unhappy with my last memo that I got this old one out of the file.  You wrote it; I just changed the bill number.”

Anna was silent for a minute and then said,

“Well, you write better than I do; I expected more of you.”

From that day on, she was respectful and pleasant.  She learned that it was OK to laugh at my jokes and that I would still work hard, regardless.

*    *    *

The Boss from Hell.  Anna was mine.  Or was she the one that taught me the most? She certainly taught me more about writing than anyone else I’ve ever known.  She taught me to be careful, to pay attention, to look at every word.  So was she really the Boss from Hell, or the Editor from Heaven? I can never decide.  Probably both.

But she is still my friend.

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July 13, 2012 · 0:00

Of Bards and Bains

You probably won’t be surprised to know that I am enjoying the news these past few days.  Some of it anyway.  I am fascinated by Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital.  I may even start to watch business news, CNBC.  And pick up a copy of the Wall Street Journal.

Nah.

But tonight I tuned in to find out the scoop.  The latest.  The Dirt.   And I heard a lot.

Mostly, the sound I heard was me screaming, though.  Because in one of those efforts to present “both sides of the story,”  MSNBC interviewed David Corn, the reporter who broke Mitt’s “When did he leave Bain Capital, and when did he know it” story.  But, to keep the semblance of balance between the two sides, they also interviewed a total DWEEBE Republican by the name of Rick Tyler.

Rick worked for Newt Gingrich and was involved in Newt’s opposition research which took on Mitt’s record as head of Bain Capital.  Now?  Well, Rick has his talking points, and he’s going through them.  On national TV.  Whether he really understands them or not.  And whether or not he can even read them correctly.  Sadly, I got the distinct impression that there is quite a bit that Rick doesn’t understand.  [We can start with the fact that during the GOP primaries he worked for a guy that everybody hated and hadn’t a snowball’s chance to win the nomination.]

OK, my problem?  Rick kept insisting that all this talk about Bain Capital is:

“A lot to do about nothing.” 

He said it with an air of intellectual superiority, as if he knew something that we did not. 

Ummmm.  He did not.  He did not even know what we all know to be the correct name of that there Shakespeare play.

Remember, this guy is a Republican spokesman.  Shouldn’t speaking be kinda his thing?  By definition, shouldn’t he be able to quote from the Bible, from Machiavelli, from Shakespeare?  Isn’t that what spokespeople do?

Now, I like to give folks the benefit of the doubt.  Perhaps Rick misspoke.  Nope.  Because he said it repeatedly.

Here’s the link to the segment:  #48179609  [Sorry, no YouTube.  This is the link to the piece — the offending language appears about 5 mins into the story.]

After the third time he announced that, for the world to pay attention to the whole Bain Capital “when did I leave and when did I know I was gone” thing was, “a lot to do about nothing,” well, the only thing I could hear was the sound of myself screaming at the TV.  Sorry.  Stupidity makes me shout.

At this moment in time, I don’t know what this Bain Capital story will amount to.   Personally, I think it is very serious, because no matter which way you look at it, you really can’t say that it is “Much Ado About Nothing.” One way or another, Mitt Romney lied.  Either he left in 1999 and lied to the State of Massachusetts about his residency when he was running for governor, or he left in 2002 and lied about the fact that he wasn’t in charge when all those nasty layoffs happened.

According to my mother, lies come back and bite you in the butt.

Maybe this time, even if you’re a Republican, those teeth are going to hurt.

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July 10, 2012 · 0:00

TB and Rick Scott in Perdition

My fake medical career started while I worked on the issue of Tuberculosis, so this issue is near to my heart. But until I read Val’s piece, I was unaware that there are folks in power here in our country who are willing to (1) just let folks die; (2) risk the spread of a deadly contagious disease; and (3) endanger everyone. Ignorance and stupidity are costly.

valentinelogar's avatarQBG_Tilted Tiara

Yet another example of malfeasance by Florida Gov. Rick Scott and the rest of the motley crew. Of course, at this stage of the game who of us aren’t surprised, it seems corruption and misconduct is the name of the game in the Sunshine State. The venality of Gov. Rick Scott is only exceeded by his on-going thumbing of his nose for federal law and the safety of others. Honestly, as a Texan I thought no Governor could be worse than the that other Rick, yes I do mean Rick Perry. However, Rick Scott truly has my own Rick beaten hands-down, in fact Rick Scott could beat Rick Perry for downright snake in the grass mean, crooked and degenerate with one hand tied behind his back.

What am I going on about you ask? Is this the Voter Suppression Rick Scott has pursued with such glee? Or the suppression of Doctors by the…

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Filed under Criminal Activity, Elections, Health and Medicine, History, Hypocrisy, Law, Politics, Science, Stupidity, Voting

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July 5, 2012 · 0:00

The Years of Living Dangerously

Hey, let’s all live dangerously.  What do you say?

Nope, I’m not talking bungee jumping.

Goooooooggggglllllllllleeeeeeeeeee Imageeeeeeeeeeee

Nope, I’m not talking sky diving.

Ahhhhhhhhh (Google again)

Nope, I am not even talking about driving down the I-95 corridor.

Nope.

I’m talking seriously daring as a group activity.  Because now that it’s summertime, well, we all need to P-A-R-T-Y.    And we need to do it all together.  It’ll be a blast.

Here, you go first.  Drive across this bridge.

Whittier Bridge on I-95 in Northern Mass. (Thanks Google)

It’s the twin of this bridge, and in roughly the same condition as this bridge was just before, well, you know.

Minnesota Bridge collapse. (Google Image)

Wouldn’t it be especially fun to drive across that?  The adrenaline rush would be amazing.  Especially when you drive across it real slow, with thousands of other similar thrill seekers.  A hoot-and-a-half?

And you don’t need to just play on that bridge.  Nope.  A study  published last year by Transportation for America found:

One in Nine Bridges in America “Structurally Deficient, Potentially Dangerous”

So chances are you won’t have to go too far to find a place to play this game.  Here’s a link to a map that will show you where. We can get  thrills every single day!

Across the country, there is the cry of “cut-cut-cut,” by which the town criers mean “gut-gut-gut.”  And it is giving everyone in the country multiple opportunities to tempt fate.  To see just how thoroughly we can decimate our services and our infrastructure before calamity strikes.

Who needs thrills from extreme sports when reality is always near?

Have you heard about what happened recently when reality struck in Colorado Springs, Colorado?

Colorado Springs is considered the “birthplace” of The Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which has spread like wildfire throughout the country, in part spawning the Tea Party movement.  It is also the home of “Focus on the Family,” you know, that bunch of progressives whose fearless leader claims “was the tea party before the tea party was cool.”

Last year, there was an election for the job of Colorado Springs Mayor.  Nine candidates ran.  Six of them signed Grover Norquist’s “no taxes” pledge.  (The very same pledge that has stymied the U.S. Congress.)  One candidate, Richard Skorman, didn’t sign the pledge.  His reasoning?

“What if the city got hit by a major wildfire?”

But reasonableness and forward thinking no longer wins votes it seems.

Mr. Skorman lost, and the candidate who won, had signed Grover’s pledge.  And “cut” was just what new Mayor Steve Bach did.  They laid off policemen and firefighters.  Sold assets.  Cut-cut-cut-cut-cut.  Yahoo!

Oh, but have you read the news lately?  Well, it seems that the city of Colorado Springs got hit by a major wildfire!  Who could have imagined that that would ever happen?  I mean, it’s a freak occurrence, right?  It never happens.  Right?  Who knew? Who could have predicted it?

Google Image

Now that the unimaginable has happened, well, they’ve called in the National Guard because, due to (1) the catastrophe, (2) the reduced police force; (3) the reduced firefighting resources; and (4) LOOTING, they need help.  Yes, there aren’t enough firefighters to protect the town, folks are looting, and there aren’t enough police to handle the crimes.

Who would ever have guessed?  Oh, yeah.  One of the candidates guessed.  My bad.

When did we become a country so unwilling to work together, to pool our resources to prevent problems and to tackle the unforeseen?  When did paying your fare share become something that only fools and progressives do?  When did working together to build a better country become something for patsies?

Oh yeah.  1980.  I remember it well.

Remember? “The government IS the problem.”

There is real need to work together, chip in — in cash and sweat equity.  That’s how America was built.  That’s how it became a great nation.  Because that’s what is really at stake in our political philosophy and the folks who are unwilling to pay more reasonable taxes (and by folks I mean the rich bastards who can afford to pay way more.  I’m talking to you, Mitt and to your buddies).

Are we a country that builds or a country that crumbles.  That collapses.  That burns.

Elections matter.

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Filed under Climate Change, Criminal Activity, Driving, Global Warming, Humor, Hypocrisy, Law, Real Estate, Taxes

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