Thursday Bag o’ Smirk

I didn’t fully see it until Romney started smirking during his press conference yesterday, but now I do: he’s another George W. Bush, and judging by his self-satisfied, uninformed comments on the administration’s actions during the attacks on our embassies in Libya and Egypt two days ago, every bit as smug and stupid. Well, all the more reason not to let him get anywhere close to the presidency. The lefties on the internet think it’s going to be an Obama landslide (even the media and many on the right seem to be coming to the same conclusion), but I wouldn’t get overly optimistic. A lot can happen between now and then. I plan to vote and I hope you do too.

Political opinion makers on both sides agree that Romney should have held his peace and let the president work the problem. Politics stops at the water’s edge, you don’t try to undermine the president during a time of national crisis, etc. But this president is different.

Remember the right wing opposition to Obama’s televised address to the nation’s schoolchildren in September 2009, how conservative pundits warned he’d fill their little heads with Socialism™ and urged parents to keep their kids home from school that day? The right in this country never accepted the legitimacy of Obama’s election: as far as they’re concerned Obama isn’t the president and they’re not going to show any respect to the office as long as he’s in it. I must say, though, I didn’t realize Romney was one of them until now.

I should have seen it when he didn’t stand up to the birthers in his party. Never mind … now I have seen the smirk, and I know.

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Local color: roll-your-own bumper stickers:

It’s how you can tell they’re sincere. In case you can’t read it, here’s what it says: OUR COUNTRY WILL BE LOST IF WE DON’T CHANGE COURSE “SAVE USA” OBAMA=NO.

I dunno. Lady looks like she’s on course to me. Unless maybe she had to sell the Maybach and downgrade to a Lexus? In which case all I have to say is “Won’t someone please think of the wealthy and give them another tax break already?” Come to think of it, that’s probably an accurate translation of the bumper sticker.

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This morning NPR covered Neil Armstrong’s memorial service in Washington DC. I was fine until Diana Krall started singing Fly Me to the Moon, and then I almost started crying. I’m almost crying now, thinking of it. Damn big lump in my throat, anyway.

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Oh god, more stupid, more burning. From (where else) Facebook:

There are so many things wrong with this I hardly know where to start. No, I do. I’ll start by saying that Facebook is full of stupids, like any place where large numbers of people gather, and by acknowledging it’s best to accept reality and not let stuff like this bother me. Right? Right.

But there is one central thing here, and it gets my goat every time I see it: the notion that you can’t serve in the military if you’re liberal, a progressive, or even a member of the Democratic Party. Where the hell do people get that idea? Oh, right … people who post stuff like this are invariably civilians who don’t know the first thing about military service. All they know is what Rush Limbaugh (who never served either) tells ’em, that any soldier who doesn’t support war is a phony soldier.

And one other goat-getter: the persistent lie pushed by the right that people on the left attack those who serve in the military. It started with those bullshit stories about hippies spitting on servicemen returning from Vietnam in the 1960s, and it lives on today, as you can see in the screencap above (“and yet there are those on the left who attack them”). Wasn’t true then, isn’t true now … but since when has the truth ever killed a zombie lie?

By the way, if you go to “The Liberty and Freedom Foundation” page on Facebook, you’ll see it’s really just an anti-Obama page hiding behind a veneer of bumper sticker patriotism. And the “foundation” is probably just some guy. Some guy who supports the military from the safety and comfort of his mother’s basement.

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That’s about all the rage I can handle today. I’ve been sucking around the house since Sunday morning, when I sprained my left knee on a hash trail. Since then it’s been RICE — rest, ice, compression, elevation — all day, every day, and I’ve never felt so useless. But the knee is better today and it’ll be better yet tomorrow, and I’m starting to get out of the house again. This morning I went to the BX on base and walked around (carefully) for half an hour. By next Wednesday, I should be ready to start out on a 2,500+ mile motorcycle trip with my friend Ed. But no hashing or bicycling between now and then.

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