There's a Place for Women in Pat BuchananLand

Poor Pat. Stuck in the South of the 1850s, where black people were slaves and women were meant to keep their mouths shut and stay in the background. There's a place for black people and women in Pat's neat, orderly, male-dominated, white world, and it's not in the Oval Office. At least, not in his lifetime.

A Song and a Suggestions for Democrats to Use Against Mitt Romney

Remember how the Republicans used footage of John Kerry's windsurfing holiday against him in attack ads? Well, now we have Willard and the fragrant Miss Ann jetskiing at their own multi-million dollar lakeside complex in New Hampshire, discussed below on Al Sharpton's recent show:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Can you imagine how much grief the Republicans would be giving a Democratic candidate (and have given the President and his family) for taking such a holiday?

Bob Schrum and Karen Finney are right. Mitt Romney is totally and utterly out of touch with the average voter. In his wildest dreams, he would never be able even to imagine the sort of lifestyles normal, struggling people lead.

Were I a part of the DNC or the Obama  campaign, I wouldn't stint to use the jetski footage accompanied by a little ditty sung by a couple of lads from the swing state of Pennsylvania.

Take it away, Darryl and John ...

Congressional Douchebag

Talking about Joe Walsh, who is walking evidence about the dumbasses that get put into power as much as by the people who don't vote, as by the people who do. An awful lot of Progressives stayed at home and sulked in the 2010 Mid-Terms, and the result was that we got handed our asses in the most ineffectual, ignorant and recalcitrant Republican House of Representatives in history.

Here's Walsh's latest performance, reinforcing his image as a sexist bully, a thug and just an ignominious piece of slime.



If he defeats Tammy Duckworth, there's something seriously wrong with our society and our nation.

The Gettysburg Address ... And Ted Nugent

On Friday, two Yankees and two Southerners sat down at a table at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City to talk about the Battle of Gettysburg and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. You can watch the bunfest below. You'll recognise the usual suspects pontificating.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Interesting, that from all of that, Mike Barnicle, plagiarist, is able to make a direct comparison between Abraham Lincoln and George Herbert Walker Bush, when the most obvious present-day analogy to Lincoln is with our current President.

As Doris Kearns Goodwin states that Lincoln's Gettysburg Address channeled encouragement of the people and the nation, North and South, to move forward from this catastrophic event, this Civil War, to move forward as a nation, it reminded me of the numerous times our President has called for the nation to do that. After all, it was Barack Obama, who reminded us that we are not red states or blue states, but the United States.


Meanwhile, back in Deliveranceland, Ted Nugent - a Yankee from Mitt Romney's home state of Michigan and the extreme Rightwing's pop posterboy, whose endorsement Willard actually sought - produces this prize piece of tripe in the Moonie rag The Washington Times.  In full rant about the Supreme Court upholding the legality of the Affordable Care Act, Nugent let this little nugget slip:-

Because our legislative, judicial and executive branches of government hold the 10th Amendment in contempt, I’m beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War. Our Founding Fathers’ concept of limited government is dead.

Uh-huh. Yes. You read it correctly. Ol'Ted spoke the unspeakable. You couldn't get further North in our great land than Michigan, and it's other favourite Rightwing nutjob son vocalises the thought that rages in the hearts and minds of many Republicans.

And, really, what Ted said is actually a dream to which most Republicans, and many of their Libertarian types, aspire.

Meanwhile, Willard had no comment on that remark. Can that be construed as tacit consent?

Ann Romney: The Lady as a Liar

It pains me to look at Mitt Romney. It pains me to look at him more than it does to listen to the lies he tells each time he opens his mouth. It pains me because I remember Mitt's daddy. My own daddy was a lifelong Democrat, who always said that there were only two Republicans about whom he gave a tinker's damn, and that those two should wake up and realise that they were really Democrats. One of those was Nelson Rockefeller, and the other was George Romney.

That's right, Mitt's daddy, who walked out of the 1964 GOP Convention when they refused to endorse a civil rights' platform, who openly emoted in a television news interview his concerns about poverty in America, and who opined that the United States was brainwashed into getting involved in Viet Nam.

Somewhere Mitt's daddy is turning in his grave.

But it also pains me to look at and listen to Mitt's wife. Together, Mitt and Ann look like what Ken and Barbie would look like today if they were human and middle-aged. Ann Romney steps straight from the Janis Ian song about a certain type of girl who marries young and then retires.

Ann Romney did just that. She was a teenaged bride who left college before graduating with an M-R-S degree and who retired to raise five sons. I'm not denigrating that. Being a mother is hard work. But it's hard fathoming that Ann Romney was part and parcel of that generation just preceding my own, when women woke up to the fact that they needed to claim their own equality of purpose in a world ruled by the Mad Men Don Draper-types of this world.

Ann Romney was the other type of woman from that era, a type who still survives today, albeit in the ivy-covered halls of sorority houses embellished with Greek alphabet symbols and usually found on college campuses someplace in the Deep South or in Texas. She's June Cleaver's bitchier younger sister, and although it would take awhile for a man to suss her bitchiness, a woman would know what she is within minutes of meeting her - a Southern woman would identify her by sight.

Curiously, the Romney campaign have put this wife and mother front and centre in an effort to humanise the wealthy, stilted and immensely overprivileged department store mannequin whom they've chosen as their Presidential candidate. The sweet, smiling woman who bigs up Mitt's personal qualities will appeal only to women who come from social backgrounds similar to her own and who can be found in cloistered, gated, hideously white communities - women who carpool their kids to the nearest, if not the most exclusive private schools and who leave their houses for designer shopping, tennis with their cronies and associated child-ferrying activities.

In a campaign where the Republican candidate not only must capture the independent middle ground (whilst retaining the lunatic fringe Right, who have taken over the party in earnest), Romney must also hope to capture a significant portion of the African-American, Latino and women's votes in order to secure victory, and I suppose there was hope that Ann would be a boon in that direction as well.

Considering the fact that, until she hit the campaign trail, the only African-Americans and/or Latinos with whom Mrs Romney would have had any direct contact would have been those who cleaned her house or raked the lawns of however many houses the Romneys own. It's doubtful she would have made any significant inroads with those communities. However, she may resonate with a certain type of female voter, as indicated by something she said in a recent interview with CBS's conservatively-inclined Jan Crawford.

You can watch the clip below:-

Not once, but twice, Mrs Romney reiterates that from the getgo, the Obama campaign strategy, specifically, has been to "kill Romney" - or. as she interrupts to indicate, to "kill this guy." She is referring to a Politico article from August 2011, where an Obama campaign official inadvertantly referred to their assumed tactic of politically killing off Romney as a candidate.

But here you have an immaculated coiffured and coutured, blonde, impeccably and wealthy white woman alluding to the Democratic incumbent wanting, figuratively, to kill any chances her husband would have for election, and - according to the words chosen by Mrs Romney - a certain group of people, a certain group of white woman conjure pictures beyond belief; and those pictures are of the big, bad black man actually killing the noble, well-meaning white one.

The language and rhetoric used by Mrs Romney would resonate with scores of white, magnolia-scented Southern women, raised on a diet of Junior League and Gone With the Wind, where people are surreptitiously, but ceaselessly reminded that "the blacks" are just waiting for the right moment to drive it home to the white population, and this might not come a moment too soon now they've captured the White House. It's the language of fear.

However, I don't think Ann Romney meant this to be incendiary. Like Melinda Henneberger, I think such remarks show just how cossetted and clueless Ann Romney is, in general. The fact that, during the interview, her husband shared a laugh with her over her remarks, also shows how cossetted and clueless he is as well.

Some choice for a Presidential candidate, especially from a party who is striving to attract a more diverse range of people to its side. I knew what Ann Romney meant, and so did Jan Crawford; but I also knew that Ann Romney was lying about the basic meanness of the Obama campaign towards candidate Romney.

Moreover, she was abjectly lying in not only accusing the Obama campaign of criticizing her husband personally, but also accusing the President of leading the charge - something that simply isn't true. The Obama campaign have scrupulously stayed within their remit of attacking Romney's so-called achievements, politically and in the business sphere, and at every turn, they've been railed against vociferously by the Romney people for "not playing fair."

When the Democrats attack Romney the businessman for his venture capitalist past at Bain Capital, they're taken to task, not only by Republicans, but also by some of their own kind. So Romney's business achievements are off-limits, so they say. When they attack his record as governor (a precursor to what he might do once in the White House, they're screamed at as well. Off-limits, is Romney the politician. They're cleverly trying to box the Democrats in, hoping that they will come out negatively with some personal stuff with which the Republicans can play martyr - specifically white martyr.

And whilst Ann Romney's remarks, Ann Romney's lie, isn't directly attacking the President per se, it is surreptitiously suggesting, sotto voce in the mind, the idea of a black killing off a white, which would be a pretty fear-inducing thing in the minds of some Republicans.

It's the language of the thing.

But then, you have to remember, that Ann Romney's Mormon way of life didn't actually recognise African-Americans as worthy of full Mormon membership until 1978. I guess she still has a little problem admitting that the blackness of a black person's skin really isn't the mark of Cain.

Later on, Michael Eric Dyson, sitting in for Ed Schultz on Schultz's MSNBC gig, reviewed Ann Romney's remarks with a selected panel of women from the Right and the Left. The disappointing aspect of the entire segment, as well as with most of the mainstream and otherwise media (Henneberger being the exception) is that no one ever actually called what Mrs Romney said exactly what it was: a lie.

I suppose more people than Southerners live by the Gone With the Wind Bible, where a lady never tells a lie - even when she's lying.

Happy Fourth of July from an ExPat in the Land of the Losers

For my sins, I married a Brit. For my most grievous sins, I was condemned to spend the better (or really, the worst) part of my adult life in the land of those who lost the Revolutionary War.

It's a curious incongruity. The British really, really haven't got over the fact that they lost out to a bunch of ragtag colonials, whose descendents they still regard as unsophisticated, uneducated and ignorant. I laugh at that, really. I'm a linguist, educated totally in the United States of America (apart from stints abroad, studying my respective languages); but I work for a British company who employ me because I'm the only damned person here, who can speak to European customers in the vernacular. As for total ignorance, I work with a twenty-one year old who, until last week, didn't know who Angela Merkel was, couldn't construct a grammatical sentence if his life depended on it, and liberally litters his conversations with choice words such as "nigger" and "cunt."

Now tell me who's ignorant, uneducated and unsophisticated.

The English, in particular amongst the four nations which make up Great Britain, suffer the most from not having a national day of celebration. The Scots celebrate St Andrew's Day. The Welsh have St David's Day, and the Catholics in Northern Ireland celebrate St Patrick's Day. April 23 is St George's Day, and George is supposed to be the patron saint of England; however George and the English flag have been appropriated by the British National Party (the fascists) and their offshoot English version of the Tea Party, the English Defence League.

For those of you who don't know, this is the British flag:-

Below is the actual flag of England:-

This is the one the racists and most thug culture in England fly with pride. Consequently, it's taken on the same pejorative aura here that the Confederate flag possesses in the United States.

So the bad guys have appropriated the patron saint's day. There really is nothing else as a substitute. There's Guy Fawkes Day on November 5th, with fireworks and bonfires and such - but that's really sort of a reverse celebration, because it commemorates when Guy Fawkes, a Catholic conspirator, tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament in the early 17th Century. I suppose they're celebrating the fact that he failed, but that particular holiday has its basis in blatant anti-Catholicism, and in a country where not only a recent former Prime Minister (Tony Blair) but also his corresponding Opposition Leader (Iain Duncan Smith) had to keep the fact that they'd both converted to Catholicism secret, and where now Catholics outnumber Anglicans (Episcopalians) by increasing numbers, that's an aspect of Guy Fawkes people want to tamp down. Besides, it's so close to October 31st and American influence has so increased over the years, instead of Guy Fawkes, kids now trick or treat on Hallowe'en, just like their American cousins.

Because the English don't have a special day to celebrate being English, they often latch pathetically onto any sporting triumph or potential triumph they can muster. This summer has been a particularly English-feeling summer. Aside from the cold weather, the rain and the gales, which have subsided for a bit to allow the sun to shine, we started out with the Jubilee ... celebrating the Queen's Sixtieth Anniversary on the throne. (Another peculiarity and why I've never become British: here, one isn't a citizen, but a subject). The British beginning morphed into a very English mid-summer, with the English soccer team playing in the European Championships in Poland and the Ukraine.

Flags flew for two weeks - from cars, from windows, even from flagpoles ... until the Italians knocked Henry V's descendents out of the competition on penalties. Now it's Wimbledon, but many English temporary tennis fanatics are choking on having to muster support for the miserable po-faced Scot, Andy Murray, who makes no secret of his dislike of anything English, except for the money he earns at Wimbledon. However, there are the London Olympics looming on the horizon, even though England is competing as part of Great Britain.

My English husband hates all this. He hates the English flag-waving, the aggression, and the jingoism that erupts every time England have cause to remember their Englishness. I keep saying that it's all because they have no national day of celebration, nothing that's entirely English. They've won no independence from anyone; sure, they overthrew the King back in 1648, but then they subsequently asked his son to come and rule again. They've won world wars, but not without someone else's help (ahem!)

In fact, so desperate are they to celebrate anything on a national basis, several pubs throughout the land are having Fourth of July celebrations, complete with American beer, hamburgers and hot dogs. I guess they're celebrating the fact we left their Empire. Go figure.

The sad fact is that in this day and age here, there's precious little to celebrate. Apart from the austerity culture being imposed by David Cameron (whose wife is a great-granddaughter of Virginia's Nancy Astor), the only other culture dominant here is the cheap celebrity type - bling, reality shows, Simon Cowell, naked aggression, functional illiteracy and just tripe. The BBC's flagship program, Eastenders, is heaviliy promoting a storyline in which a promiscuous slut of a wife of one of it's characters embarks on yet another flagrant affair with a mystery man, and viewers are being asked to guess the identity of the shagger from a list of five character candidates.

Meanwhile on another BBC channel, they're presenting four of Shakespeare's history plays, starting with Richard II ... and nobody's watching.

Happy Fourth from the Land of the Defeated.

Mitch McConnell's True Confession

I love the word "obfuscation." It's such a brilliant description of any Republican caught in the headlights of an interview, especially about healthcare reform, and  with what they'd replace the recently-proclaimed Constitutional Affordable Care Act.

They were all over the place on the Sunday shows - Paul Ryan, amongst them - just obfuscating right, left and centre about what they'd do about healthcare once they'd repealed what they call Obamacare. (Just as well that they obfuscated, because when they don't obfuscate, they just lie - like repeating again and again that the Democrats were planning on making $500 billion worth of cuts to Medicare (a program which the Tea Party still hasn't sussed is socialised medicine).

So into the Republican-friendly bosom of Fox News to be interviewed by Chris Wallace. Wallace the Not-So-Younger has good journalism DNA, although years of working for Fox have rendered this almost undetectable; but yesterday, either Wallace remembered he was a registered Democrat or he channeled the DNA of his late father, which resulted in a pretty forceful hammering in the face of McConnell's repeated obfuscation ... until the point that McConnell actually and inadvertantly confessed the real motive behind the Republicans' stubborn refusal to offer their alternative to the Affordable Care Act.

Three times, Wallace pushed McConnell for an answer as to how the Republicans would insure the 30 million people who would gain insurance cover under the ACA, if the Republicans were to repeal the law; and the third time, McConnell blurted out the actual Republican truth: That the 30 million uninsured people in the United States really wasn't the issue at all.

Of course, it isn't. The immediate issue for the Republicans is regaining ultimate and absolute power. Everything else is irrelevant. The European socialised medicine meme, the death panels, pulling the plug on grandma ... all lies to frighten low-information voters (increasingly making up the majority of voters in the country), whose real fear is that a black man sits behind the desk in the Oval Office.

And that's the real core of any Republican's values. They want the power, and the people be damned.

Watch Mitch's rare moment of unintentional honesty below:-



And here's a song for Mitch in light of what he was unprepared to admit, but did anyway:-