Final Random Musings on 2010: Reality Deficit and Denial Disorder (RDDD)

Texas State Board of Ed Chair Gail Lowe told the Daily Texan, as the board ordered the hard-rightward rewriting of textbooks for the state's schoolchlidren: ""I don't see any evidence that people are pursuing any political or personal agendas." (See no. 5.)

by Noah

1. March 3, 2010: kids in the air-traffic tower at JFK. Hey, it’s not a damn video game! Kids were actually guiding pilots in planes! What about security procedures? Can I be air-traffic controller for a day? How about letting me in the Pentagon so I can run the predator drones? ) (Not a good idea!) Gee, wouldn’t that be swell? I know Reagan fired the air-traffic controllers, and I know that the corporate suits these days like to replace workers with younger workers who will work for less, but this is absurd. Does this happen at NORAD?

2. For a long time, it’s been obvious to me that being a Republican is more than just aberrant behavior. It's a diagnosable mental syndrome. But treatable? This year paranoid fruitcake and Repug darling Liz Cheney conjured up a fab list of Al Qaeda sympathizers in the Obama U. S. Department of Justice, most notably seven attorneys who were working on the defense of Al Qaeda prisoners. These attorneys are assigned to the cases because our justice system demands that everyone who comes before it gets a lawyer. Liz just can’t deal with that. Her ravings reveal the basic inability to grasp concepts of American law and a basic disregard for it as well. I guess she got that from her dad, along with his obvious insanity.

Liz specializes in batshit-crazy. Chip off the old blockhead. Where did she announce this secret revelation about pro-Al Qaeda attorneys? Three guesses, and the first two don’t count. Where else but on the Padded-Cell Channel? Which wacko’s show? Coulda been any of ‘em, but in this case it was on Bill “Where’s my Propeller Beanie” O’Lie-ly’s nightly koo-koo hour.

The sane among us (those who don’t make a habit of watching Fox) can only hope that Liz never has children. But as long as a woman can buy sperm, that threat will weigh on the world. Put a cap on it, Liz!

3. Remember when, during the campaign, Republicans led by Ohio’s John Bohner kept screaming, “Where are the jobs?” Of course, Boehner never answered the question. But one thing is for sureA A lot of jobs that would have been there for Ohioans aren’t gonna happen now that the people of Ohio have elected Republican John Kasich as their governor. One of his first acts was to send $440 million back to President Obama, saying “no thanks.” That money was to go for building an extensive light-rail system between Ohio cities. People from Ohio were counting on the jobs involved in its construction and operation. Talk about people voting for their own self-destruction!

Kasich apparently thinks his mission is to keep the economy in his state depressed and blame it on the Obama administration in 2012. And speaking of taking things away from people --

4. North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx voted against school lunches. She was one of only 13 in the House to do so. What an abomination of a humanoid she is! Someone should check her childhood home for toxic chemicals and lead paint. How else to explain what’s left of her brain? Real John Waters fodder.

5. Our biggest nut state, Texas, has turned itself into a “reeducation” camp with its rewriting of school textbooks. If you can’t burn ‘em, change ‘em.

That Texas is a lost cause is a no-brainer. Hell, they’ve even elected and reelected a governor who wants to secede -- so let 'em! Except for Austin, the place is a hellhole anyway. But it’s more than that. Texas wants its textbooks to be more in line with the Republican Party platform, so now Joe McCarthy will be seen in a favorable light! Phyllis Schlafly will be included. Plenty of Newt Gingrich and his “Contract on America” too. The Confederacy’s mortal enemy, Abe Lincoln, will play a diminished role in history, as will the first African-American Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall. Those dirty, wicked, evil labor leaders such as Cesar Chavez will be written out of history, because they might inspire some high schooler. Oh, and there’ll be lots more of that ol’ time religion! Even what our style of government is called will change in the new books: Out goes “democratic society”; in comes “constitutional republic.” Can’t have our youngsters thinking about democracy now, can we?

If this is happening in Texas, why should it matter to the rest of us? Simple. Texas has 4.7 million public-school students. Because of that, the publishers of textbooks often tailor the curriculum to the wishes of the Texas school board, a school board that is now in the control of obvious wackjobs and crackpots. As I said, let them secede. They can pollute the minds of their kids and leave the U.S. alone. Good riddance.

6. Can’t get enough of Texas? Well, Rep. Randy Neugebauer’s “baby-killer” comment aimed at anti-choice Rep. Bart Stupak on the House floor while health care reform was being debated highlighted the need for psychiatric examinations for all would-be political candidates. Such tests aren’t foolproof, but they might filter out at least some of the vast parade of nutbags running for office. Stupak is a vehement anti-abortion guy. He even managed to water down some women’s health care rights in the recent health care legislation, but it just wasn’t enough for Neugebauer. Herr Neugebauer is also a birther: no surprise there. He’s just another example of the Texas mindset. Is it the broiling heat of the sun? Do they drink the oil as it comes from the ground Too much peyote?

7. In bordering nut state Oklahoma, state legislators have a habit of removing President Obama’s portrait from the walls. It’s traditional in all state legislatures to have the U.S. president’s portrait on the wall, but it seems Oklahomans just can’t get used to Obama’s face in the place. Hmm. What is it about President Obama’s face that Oklahomies can’t accept? I wonder. Put it in the context of Abe Lincoln and Thurgood Marshall being downplayed in Texas views of history, and, well, you get the picture. Expect the Obama portrait to be replaced with a “We reserve the right to refuse service” sign any day now.

8. I sense a recurring theme in Republican minds. What could it be? Let’s hop east to Virginia, where in some minds the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. Who knew? Soon after taking office, Gov. Bob McDonald declared the month of April “Confederate History Month,” a month of celebration of Virginia’s joining the Confederacy in a joint act of treason with the rest of the Confederate states back in 1860 -- a celebration of a “glorious” time when whitey could still own and beat and rape black people with impunity. There was no mention of slavery in McDonald’s little white-supremacy proclamation.

When asked why there was no mention of slavery in his proclamation, the Grand Wizard, I mean governor, said:

There were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obvioulsy it involved slavery. It involved other issues, but I focused on the ones that I thought were most significant.

Well, slavery was especially significant if you were a slave. McDonald even called for a literacy test for ex-felon voters in April. Can an order to restore “whites-only” water fountains be far behind? Now that's heritage! A heritage a Republican can believe in!

Lest anyone think McDonald doesn’t represent the overall philosophy of the Republican Party, guess who the RNC chose to deliver the response to President Obama’s State of ohe Union speech. That’s right. Send a bigot to speak in response to a black president. Nice! Genius! Virginia Is for Bigots, and so is McDonald’s party.

9. But in fairness, it’s not just in the South. Republican Teabagging homophobe Carl Paladino, the 2010 GOP candidate for governor who it turns out for several years was a happy rent-collecting landlord for two Buffalo gay bars (which his spokesman said he had found to be "good paying businesses"), has a well-documented habit of e-mailing hard-core porn, including bestiality porn, racist cartoons, e-mails that portray Africans as monkeys, e-mails that dubbed an African tribal ritual as an Obama inauguration rehearsal, etc. Once again the Teabaggers had to say that a prominent Teabagger didn’t speak for them and their views weren’t really the same, that Teabaggers aren’t racist, uh-uh, no way, blah-blah . . .

10. Mr. Sleaze Goes to Washington: Lord Bankfiend of Goldman Sachs, as in Sachs-your-savings, gets the lead in this one.

It never ceases to amaze me that people like this can actually walk around among us and feel no shame or guilt of any kind. They are the embodiment of evil, not unlike those creatures in the movie Alien. Watching the criminally deviant Wall Streeters doing the pantomime dog-and-pony-show grilling in the Senate this year was like watching flies lay their eggs on some nice fresh reeking dogshit. What the media and our political social parasites call "grilling" is little but a massage designed to put some distance between the arch-criminals of Wall Street and their political enablers in Washington. Put 'em all on trial and line 'em up at the guillotine out on the Mall right in front of the Capitol Building.

I also have to take time to mention that Bankfiend has an understudy in one Fabrice Tourre, who was cleaned up and brought before the Senate committee to face a mild tongue-lashing in a $3000 suit, proving once and for all, the nicer the suit, the bigger the sleazeball. Nice manicure too, Fabio! Can I interest you in one of my patented, and more appropriate, power-drill scalp massages?

11. This year actor Warren Beatty announced that he has slept with 13,000 women. Take that, Tiger Woods! But sorry, Warren, I knew Wilt Chamberlain, and you'e no Wilt Chamberlain! So, is this sort of thing pathological? Maybe Facebook should have a special division for celebrities like Wilt and Warren. It could be called Penisbook. Warren’s penis has 13,000 friends! But Wilt’s has 20,000. I don’t know about all of this. To me, if you can’t come up with the names of all the people you’ve slept with . . .


NOAH'S YEAR 2010 IN REVIEW

10 Random Musings (1)
2010, Looking Back: To Republicans, It Was So Much More Than Just a Speech to Kids
Random Musings on 2010 (2)
Random Musings on 2010 (3)
Random Musings on 2010 (4)
Random Musings on 2010 (5)
Wacko of the Year: Sharron Angle -- A Lesson in the Outer Limits of Republican Lunacy
Looking Back at 2010: Justice Elena Kagan 1, Crackerjackass Newt 0

Quotations of a Party on Crack, 2010 Version --
Republicans in Their Own Words:
Part 1, The Unemployed
Part 2, When Cousins Marry
Part 3, It's a Party!

AND THE YEAR 2009 IN REVIEW:
12 Days of Christmas Scorn

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