Random Musings

American Horror Story.

Next Wednesday 10PM, on FX.

Jessica Lange.

'Nuff said.

I love Carlos to death, but for someone so musical--he plays the trumpet and piano while all I play is the radio--he cannot dance--to steal from Seinfeld, 'He's a full body dry heave set to music--and he is also what I will not-so-politely call a song rapist.

Case in point; at breakfast the other day I was commenting on how cold it was, and made even colder by the wind and Carlos starts with this, ♪♫ The wind is blowing off my head...♫♪

"Um, isn't that ♪♫Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head♫♪?

It was, and yet, sadly so, it wasn't.

We've all heard tale about Lady Gaga copying Madonna. I mean, we mostly hear it from Madonna, but we do hear it. But now it seems Gaga has sunk a good deal lower: Justin Bieber.

A few weeks back Bieber was perfuming and, well, puked on stage, but soldiered on.

Then just last week Lady Gaga hurled while singing 'Edge of Glory" and just kept going.

This is what folks are calling 'Biebering'.

Funny, but I puke when Justin sings, too, and then I hurry and change the channel.

Just sayin'.

Jerry Sandusky has been sentenced to 30-to-60 years in prison on 45 counts of child sexual abuse charges.

At first I thought it was 30-to-60 on each count, but it's not. Now, I know, Sandusky is an old man and will more than likely die in prison, but, still, I would have loved to hear a judge sentence him to 1350 years, or 30 years for each count.

That would have been justice.

Yesterday we had the tale of Jon Hubbard, first term congressman from Arkansas who believes that slavery was a "blessing" because Africans captured and forced into slavery had a good life here because they were in America. i thought that Arkansas had finally dug down to the bottom of Asshat Hill, but then, apparently, there's an Asshat Cave and this guy just crawled out of it.

Charlie Fuqua, a GOP candidate for the Arkansas legislature believes that children who are "rebellious" should be killed:

"The maintenance of civil order in society rests on the foundation of family discipline. Therefore, a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellious children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given in Deut 21:18-21:"

And so, I say, to Arkansas, what the f**k is wrong with you people? You elected a man who thinks slavery was good, who thinks letting black kids go to school with white kids is good, and now you're actually contemplating voting for a man who would kill sassy kids?

Seriously, Arkansas, even you can do better.

Now, on to Partners, the new “gay” show from CBS; or, as I call it, Will and Jack Because Will Turned Straight And Is Engaged To Grace.

On the old W&G, one of the running gags was game night and how competitive W&G were about winning. On Partners, er, W&J the running joke is about game night and how competitive one of the characters is.

Oh, such writing. See, it isn’t two characters that have a win-at-all-costs attitude, it’s just one.

See? It’s different.

Not better. Different.

On that other gay show, The New Normal, I am finding slight improvement. The main gays are still stereotypically flighty and flouncy and straight-acting, but the writers do get off a few good jabs at the GOP, One Million Moms, and even Chick-fil-A, so at least they’re current.

Well, after the debates, where Mittsy flipped, then flopped, then flipped back, it seemed all anyone could talk about was Big Bird, and Mittsy’s idea that cutting funding to PBS could help balance the budget.

Interesting, no? No. See, the amount of funding given to PBS is actually 1/100^th of 1%.

Yeah. Big savings Mittsy. But then he flipped on his health care stance, only to have his team say he didn’t flip, that his original stance was his stance not the stance he took at the debate. Then, still flipping, he flipped on abortion, though once again his team “corrected" him.

Is that presidential? Is that what we need?

Or, do we need good news, like, oh, I don’t know, the fact that the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell sharply last week to the lowest level since February 2008.

Indeed.

Add to that the news that the economy added 114,000 workers last month, causing unemployment to drop from 8.1% to 7.8%, the lowest level since Obama took office,

So, do we want someone who thinks Big Bird is The Problem in the White House? Do we want someone who can’t even keep a stance on any issue, without having to deny he said what he said when he said it?

Or, do we want the president who is fixing the economy, the president who never promised a quick fix?

I stand with Obama.

Nashville.

They kept touting it as the Best Show On TV.

Well, I don’t know about that, but I do know that I liked it. I liked that the characters weren’t one-dimensional, one-note characters. I liked that the actual actors sang and the actual singers acted. I liked that Connie Britton’s character wasn’t all sickly sweet and passive like many female country artists are portrayed, but she had sass and anger and vitriol.

All in all, I’m liking Nashville. 

A Tale of Two Republicans

Okay, so anyone who stops by here with any amount of frequency knows my liberal bent when it comes to politics. I am not a fan of the GOP, though I am not anti every single republican. Just the one who want to use their Bibles to legislate, who want to push their own view of morality—which is often warped beyond recognition—onto the rest of, the ones who want to tell The Gays what they can and cannot do, and tell women what they can and cannot do with their own bodies, healthcare, and contraception.

So, it’s not all Republicans, but it is most; and here’s two more:

Congressman Richard Hanna, a New York Republican, has ALLEGHEDLY called an executive at a local TV station and threatened to pull his advertising if the station televised a debate in which the congressman refused to participate.

Bully say what?

Dan Lamb, Hanna's Democratic challenger for the newly drawn 22nd District, was prepared to take the stage by himself Friday for the taping of a 30-minute question and answer session, but the coverage was canceled after an "angry" Hanna contacted the station.

See, Hanna doesn’t want to debate, so he refuses; then the station offers up the debate time-slot to his opponent, so he could answer questions about his campaign. But Hanna doesn’t want his opponent talking, and Hanna doesn’t wanna talk, so he threatens the station with a loss of revenue.

GOP.OMG.

Dan Lamb says:

"My opponent has been caught coercing a television station. This is a big deal. This is about a millionaire congressman manipulating a television station and succeeding."

Actually, this is about the GOP trying to bully its way to winning an election.

But Richard Hanna is nothing when you compare him to Jon Hubbard, a Republican member of the Arkansas House of Representatives. Hubbard has written a new book in which he says that slavery was "a blessing" for African-Americans.

Oh, but he did.

Hubbard self-published his book—"Letters to the Editor: Confessions of a Frustrated Conservative"—of hate speech, and, after calling slavery a “blessing” he goes on to say that integration of schools hurts white children, and that African slaves had much better lives under slavery in America than slavery in Africa.

But then he adds that blacks do not contribute to society, and that a situation is developing the United States which is similar to that of Nazi Germany.

Here are Hubbard’s own words:

 “… the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise. The blacks who could endure those conditions and circumstances would someday be rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of the Earth.”

What a blessing that people were stolen from their homes, shipped across the sea like garbage and then forced to work in American fields and factories on the off-chance that one day, some day, they might be free.

Jon Hubbard declined to comment on the book saying he has no time. And by “no time” he means he doesn’t have the good sense to know when to shut his mouth that god gave a goat.

But he continues. On his website, the first term congressman says:

"And perhaps the most important pledge I can make to the people of District 58, the citizens of Arkansas, and to myself, is to do whatever I can to defend, protect, and preserve our Christian heritage. Regardless of one’s religious beliefs, if we as a nation continue to turn away from those Christian principles and values upon which this great nation was founded, we will have truly lost everything worth saving!"

And he is staunchly anti-immigrant, calling for the University of Arkansas to be audited to see if tax money had been spent on a panel discussion about undocumented immigrants, and he has asked the Arkansas Department of Health to implement a policy that would require birth certificates to be produced—in order to prove citizenship—by anyone seeking non-emergency medical care in a hospital.

That’s the GOP; Hanna and Hubbard. They're not indicative of the entire, but they are great in numbers. And people wonder why the country is turning away from the party.

Richard Hanna

Jon Hubbard