Negative Nancy Runs for Office

We only have a week before the national nightmare of this election cycle will be over. I should be breathing easier. Seven short days and we get at least a few months before the 2020 cycle begins. And yet I can’t relax. I’m so tired, like my blood has been replaced by Gummi bears.

I was writing a lot about the candidates during the primaries but I got lost in the swamp of stupidity and arrogance. It took me a long time to climb my way back out into the sunlight. And yet the sun isn’t as bright as it should be. Every day I’m battered by commercials on radio and television about this candidate or the other one. And it’s not just the presidential race, its state campaigns.

“Bill Fenstermacher eats pickles in bed!”

“Jane Woebegone makes cat videos in her attic!”

“Clancy Chigger voted against new hats for railroad conductors!”

“Bill Fenstermacher used to work as a carnival freak called ‘Billy the Goat Boy’!”

“Diane Loosescrew wants to tax your toe nail clippings!”

“Jane Woebegone shops at Target with your tax payer money!”

“Clancy Chigger knows what you need . . . because he’s a stalker!”

“Diane Loosescrew has an ingrown nose hair. She’ll never survive a full term!”

All day, every day, it’s a bloodbath of negativity splashed across my face. I grab a towel to wipe it away but it smears like melted chocolate until my whole head is covered in electoral slime.

“Larry Bungle sold crystal meth to panda bears!”

“Francine Fuss wants to give our jobs to migrant ornithologists!”

“Larry Bungle and his brother Harry share 1 pair of socks!”

“Francine Fuss feels fairly fine with festering fish fouling fresh water!”

Make it stop! It sticks to my skin and won’t wash off. All the yelling and name calling and lies and acting . . .

“Did you know Harold Megawealthyman bought his position as county lunatic?”

“Sarah Hatespeople wants to force us all to love pumpkin spice!”

Voter down! Voter down! I need platforms and policy papers. I need voting records and plans for strengthening infrastructure. Stop the insults! Stop lying! Stop with the fear-mongering! Dorothy? Dorothy, where’s Toto? We have to get home! The flying monkeys are coming, click your heels together!!!

Run Jim Run

That was a close one people. We almost had this election cycle without him. I know, I know, you’re saying to yourself “How could we have had a presidential election without HIM?” The simple answer is: we couldn’t. This whole enterprise was going to fall like a house of cards eventually.

The announcement was made yesterday and the party has just begun. The bunting is still being hung, cheese platters are being constructed, bands of questionable ability and provenance are tuning guitars, and crisply dressed college-age voters are sharing drinks and salutations.

Jim Gilmore has announced his candidacy for president.

“Who is Jim Gilmore?” you ask.

I have no fucking clue.

But make no mistake he’s the one we’ve been waiting for. The other 21 num-nuts running can’t do the job. Hilary Clinton was first lady and later the secretary of state. Pah! What kind of qualifications are they? Bernie Sanders has been in congress for 24 years. So? Lindsey Graham has been in congress for 20 years. Yeah, and?

Jim Gilmore used to be governor.

Of Virginia.

I’ll now quote from the Book of Republican, 8^th chapter, verses 5 and 6:

5 “And the day will come when he walks the land of strife and discord, and lo he will know he has been called. Called to be “the one”, the candidate to end all candidates, the lambda and the epsilon. 6 And he will heed the call of the stricken sheep and announce his presence with authority.

The celebration has started well and true. Mandy Patinkin is drunkenly singing “Over the Rainbow”. A conga line of elderly women are risking broken hips to dance up and down the street. Socially conscious teenagers are furiously scrolling Wikipedia to learn who this latest old white man is whose running for president. It’s a glorious day here in the United States of America.

Jim Gilmore is here to run the country and stay relevant, and he’s all out of relevance.

Election Rant

For the love of God get this election over with I can’t watch another political TV ad or listen to another radio ad or receive another email from the Democratic party of York County asking me for money you’re asking me for money you should be giving me money I’m in debt because I was out of work and then had to work two jobs to make ends meet and you’re asking me for money shut up leave me alone and do you believe I’m going to make my decision on who to vote for due to your ads I couldn’t care less you’re all liars anyway none of you tell the truth about anything and it’s no better on the state level ad after ad after ad each contradicting the previous one lie lie lie lie lie lie lie the money you spent on all these ads that no one is paying attention to could have started businesses which then could have hired people putting them back to work it could have stocked soup kitchens and shelters with food clothing blankets anything they needed it could have funded cancer research Parkinson research ALS research there are so many better places that money could have been spent please please please please please end this election

An Election Elegy

Now that Mittens Romney has chosen his VP candidate in Paul Ryan, people keep asking me what I think of Ryan. Hmm. He wants to privatize social security which in my opinion is one of the most destructive ideas a politician has ever come up with. He wants to get rid of Medicare which would injure my mother and every other poor to middle class senior citizen in the country. His budget, which other republicans eat up like chocolate pudding, has been called by most economic experts “unworkable” and “a fantasy”.

So, what do I think of Ryan? As I construct my answer I realize even I can’t say that many swear words in a row and feel good about myself. He is, in a nutshell, someone I will never understand in a million years. Maybe it’s because I’m not rich, but I can’t not care about the vast majority of the American population the way Ryan and Romney don’t. They’re liars and deceivers. I don’t know how anyone cannot see that.

Mitt Romney made $20 million last year and technically didn’t have a job. His wife goes on campaign stops filled with run-of-the-mill working class people and wears a $900 shirt. How do these people who are cheering for him not vomit all over his designer shoes?

There is a hue and cry for Romney to release his taxes. We don’t need to see them. We already know he has off shore accounts in the Cayman Islands. He’s a tax cheat. There is no reason to have accounts in the Caymans other than to cheat the taxman. Again, explain to me how republican voters aren’t incensed by this. Why would you vote for this man?

In the 2008 Democratic primary I voted for Hillary Clinton. I did not believe Obama had enough experience and should have waited to run for president. When he won the primary I voted for him. I didn’t drink the Kool Aid of hope and ‘yes we can’, I just knew I couldn’t vote for the politician John McCain had become. In 2000 I would have crossed my party and voted for McCain had he won his party’s nomination. But in 2008 he was a different candidate, a desperate one with no original ideas left. So I voted for Obama. Once again I had essentially voted for the lesser of two evils instead of someone I really believed in.

If I had to grade Obama I’d give him a C for his first term. I don’t think the Affordable Care Act is perfect but at least he did something. He seems to have surrounded himself with a cabinet of functionaries, but not visionaries. He didn’t listen to the leading economists about the short comings of his stimulus package and here we are four years later in very much the same swamp of unemployment, high gas and food prices and zero confidence that we are elevating, not descending. I am supportive of his general ideas but his methods of implementing them are not working.

In November I will once again vote for Obama because I don’t have a choice. Mitt Romney has only one idea and that’s to make sure he stays rich. The man can’t think on his feet and his over seas trip recently proved he was even more inept at foreign policy than Sarah Palin. I wonder if he can see Europe from Massachusetts?