Things Political

I have so far managed to stay out of things political this year, for the most part anyway.  To be crystal clear as to where my own loyalties may lie, I will unconditionally support President Obama in 2012.  I will do so, not so much because I agree with everything he does - I wish he were even half as liberal in his policies as his would-be GOP opponents charge - but because he is certainly the only sane alternative in the extraordinarily politically insane universe Across The Pond, at least as that universe is represented by GOP candidates.

I am hardly the only person on the globe who feels the same.  I have just read through the coverage of last night's GOP debate in Arizona, as blogged by the Guardian's Richard Adams.  While it is true that the Guardian and I are generally kindred spirits on things political, it is also true that I owe Adams and Guardian DC Bureau Chief Ewen MacAskill an exceptional debt of gratitude for their reporting.  They literally took a bullet for me - I could not have stood it at all.  I also owe them plentiful apologies for having to sit through such a farce.

In fact while I'm at it, I apologize to the globe at large.  These idiots do not represent Americans I know and they most certainly do not represent me.  In fact, they do not even represent many Republicans I know and certainly not the majority of those from the 50s through the 70s who were generally decent human beings whose political leanings were, for the most part, to the left of today's Democratic Party.  In the 1980s, however, there was a political sea change, which worsened in the 1990s with the advent of Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House - yes, the selfsame Gingrich who is currently in the running for GOP nominee.  That political sea change sent Democratic wimps scurrying from the political left-ish high ground to the center and then to the right, while Republicans - as represented by the current crop of candidates - have fallen completely off the cliff into total insanity.

Apparently inspired by how well one particularly insane candidate, Rick Santorum, is doing in the polls, in part for being an extreme religious and social conservative, several state legislatures - dominated by rabidly religious right-wing GOP legislators - have introduced bills that would literally prevent family planning at all and at worst prevent any woman of child-bearing age from travelling out of state simply because there might possibly be a slight outside chance that she would be doing so to have an abortion.  American Taliban indeed!  One of these wingnuts has even alleged that the Girl Scouts is a "radical" organization that promotes abortions and homosexuality.  These so called "family values" folks - whose "family values" are often quite shaky themselves - apparently have no  problem with giving little girls "creepy" experiences.  Give me a break!  Please!

Thank heavens for the Guardian and all journalists who really do try to report the news in critical fashion, instead of toadying to extreme candidates to give the impression that ninnies like these actually have something meaningful to say.  They are not only crazy, they are dangerous.  I am also heartened by the Guardian's readership, or at least by those whose comments made sense or held a modicum of humor, such as the three below:

1. NatashaFatale: Mitt: "Syria is their [Iran's] only ally in the middle east."
Wow. What was the name of that other majority Shiite country...begins with "I"...don't tell me, I'll remember...
2. mope When is the box set of the debates coming out? I will buy it.3. ClaudeIvan Newt fairly waddled on stage.  America will never elect a fat president. I'm talking to you, Chris Christie.