In Other News...

Here's a digest of stuff currently running through my brain.

• Crisis? What Crisis?
Last week I somehow ended up in Times Square 3 times. I saw two Broadway shows (both meh) and took visiting friends to a Jazz gig at Iridium. To judge from the stampedes of tourists, most of them evidently American, running around Times Square like the bulls in Pamplona, I can announce to you that the economy, both national and foreign, has recovered. Otherwise, how do we explain the hordes of tourists that have descended upon our fair megalopolis? I've been living in this city for almost 20 years and I have never seen so many tourists. And so many American tourists. They are going to Broadway shows in droves, which ain't cheap, even if they're buying tickets in bulk. They are staying in overpriced hotels and they are being happily ripped off at  tourist traps. New York is expensive.
So stop the economic whining, Red Staters, cause I'm on to you. You are not so bad off, and you secretly love New York and wish with all your might you could be so cool as to live here. Alas, you are not.
I am an unapologetic New York snob, (and with good reason: I live here!) but do not misunderstand me. I do not dislike tourists. I love helping them find their way. And telling them what to order at Joe's Shanghai. And steering them away from eating in Little Italy. And trying not to strangle them when they walk 5 deep in slow motion on the street.

• Bendygate!
Don't get me wrong, but Sarah Palin reminds me of Hitler. Wait! Let me explain why. Because I'm deathly afraid of her, that's why. Because I cannot fathom how there could possibly be people who don't see her for what she is: a dangerous, ignorant arriviste, resentful, mean-spirited, provincial, petty, arrogant and hungry for power.  That there are people out there who are still drinking her Kool-Aid (with bendy straws!) is very worrisome to me. This latest fracas is a gift for those of us people of sense who can tell a psycho-hypocrite-demagogue when we see one. Turns out that her "public speaking" demands (as if what comes out of her mouth is speech) outstrip any entertainment diva's.  Suffer the little people. It is not in her interest that the "folks" who so adore her find out how craven and two-faced she is. So people have to fish out the details of her speaking contracts from the garbage, which, if you think about it, is where they rightfully belong.

To our Health!

I've been watching the passing of the health care bill from the sidelines because I'm exhausted from the topic. I'm glad (and rather suprised) they passed it, it's not what we deserved or demanded, but it will have to do. It's better than nothing.
I hope that Obama takes this opportunity to hold on to his cojones and continue enacting sweeping reversals to the Republican policies that have harmed this country for so many years. It is obvious that bipartisanship is a fantasy, so let's drop the pretense and get things done without it.
After reading the comment section on this interesting article in the NYT that says that the health care bill amounts to a redistribution of wealth, I realized that sane people in high income cities like New York are going to end up paying for the health insurance of the trailer trash idiots that think this bill is marxist and that spit on Black Civil Rights leaders and hurl insults at gay congressmen.
As Obama said in his pep talk to Democrats before the vote, we are doing this for the very people who don't want it. If it was up to me, let them fester with incurable illnesses and no insurance until they cry uncle. They deserve every rotted tooth, every spotted liver, all the diabetes and obesity and heart disease and inner putrefaction that calamity can visit on them. If possible within the the next 4 years, before the bill actually starts working.
And then Sarah Palin's "Don't retreat - reload" comment, what the hell is that? Hankering for a lynch mob, perhaps? Someone muzzle that Nazi bitch already.
All this mass tea bag hysteria is nothing but white racists in a panic. They can complain about taxes, and socialism and their America and whatever you like, but the actual subtext is "the uppity Black man is coming to get us. It's his payback time and we are scared. Plus, we just can't suffer the idea that he is in charge". It is a serious mass delusion with very disturbing roots and it is about time we stop treating it as  ridicule. It needs to be condemned and rejected, not just laughed at. 
It is up to the rest of us, which I'd like to believe constitute the majority of decent, sane, lucid and sensible people in this country, including moderate Republicans who should be dying of shame and anguish, to repel and repulse, ostracize and shrink these lunatics and their media cheerleaders to an irrelevant, inconsequential sideshow.
The Republican Party, I insist, has made a gross miscalculation, and has allowed the criminal, lunatic fringe to rule the roost. The loonies have taken over the asylum. The Republican leadership thinks this will win them votes at the polls. Perhaps on those moronic red states. I believe that their abandonment of moderation, sensibility, responsibility and reason will continue to cost them dearly. They should be ashamed of themselves.

And no, it's not refreshing if you can't speak English while in office, or while running away from it.

I've had it with the people who think that inarticulateness in politics is charming and refreshing.
Go read a fucking book!
And I am always amazed that the people who champion this ignoramus are the same people who get all bent out of shape when immigrants don't speak the King's English. For crying out loud. At least they are immigrants. They already speak one language. And they are not the governor of anything.
Having said this, the edited version of Palin's resignation speech is very much fun and a good grammar lesson to boot.
Thanks to Ethan for posting in FB!

P.S.: And yes, the "liberal" media laughs at you, because you are laughable. You fully deserve the excoriation.

Bill Kristol is a Putz

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Bill Kristol
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Joke of the Day

When even a Republican who can purportedly edit a magazine insists on aligning himself with the fringe, that means truly that all of the Republican party now officially belongs in a sideshow. They are as vulgar and as disturbing as a freakshow, but with all due respect to actual freaks, unfortunately not as innocuous. Their appetite for self-destruction is matched by their appetite for the destruction of the social and moral fabric of this country.
Kristol insists, against all evidence (the latest being the inscrutable farewell "poem" to Alaska), that Sarah Palin is just great. That she is fit for office. Both of them should be institutionalized and the key thrown away.



He insists, if I remember this correctly, because he is one of the people who convinced her to run with McCain. If people could be sued for dangerous irresponsibility, we'd be calling a class action suit against him. But he laughs it off. He thinks it's provocative. Probably he will soon be shilling one book or another. It's the height of cynicism and of condescension. He should stop pretending he is an intellectual and be Rush Limbaugh's sidekick. That's where he actually belongs.
So I don't know why it astounds people when Kristol spews incongruous views on healthcare on The Daily Show, views almost even more stupid than his unfathomable support for Palin. Like saying that the American people do not deserve the same level of healthcare than our soldiers get from the VA, which apparently is the best public health service in the country. (Which led him to admit that the government is indeed capable of furnishing us taxpayers with excellent healthcare).
Or like saying that the VA healthcare is expensive and then quickly correcting himself, because what could be more evil and more callous than counting beans when it comes to the health of the veterans? But counting beans on the health over the rest of the country is fine. We have been deemed undeserving and need to be punished for it by none other than insurance companies.
The man is entitled to his opinion on healthcare, which apparently to these people is like shopping for underwear. But I think his support for Sarah Palin is more dangerous.
In the end, if there is a silver lining, is that they keep running themselves into the ground.

Be a patriot: scorn Sarah Palin.

It is the patriotic duty of every American citizen to heap unlimited amounts of scorn and vitriol on the topic of Sarah Palin's resignation and her future political hopes. The mere fact of her political existence is already surreal, pathetic and ridiculous, as is the entire Republican party, which is having a decadence as grotesque and revolting as Nero's Rome. However, it is our duty to remind her in no uncertain terms that she and her party demean and diminish the great civic achievement of our last Presidential election. In this historical moment, the citizens singlehandedly delivered this country from the clutches of indecency, and saved and helped restore the last shred of dignity of our political system.
Nobody knows why she is doing what she is doing. She is either having a meltdown or planning to run for president. Let us pray it's the former and not the latter, because she is unfit for public life. I think we should all be tired of the grotesque humiliations we endured for eight years and should countenance no more from the likes of her.
One thing is clear: She recently signed a lucrative contract to "write" a book.
The sheer absurdity of it all.