So long, Farewell, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld
Goodbye, 2012.So long, presidential debates. We probably won’t have any more for 18 months or so.
Vaya con dios, Karl Rove.
And give my regards to Dick Armey, a man whose name describes his political aspirations. One of the most pernicious lies of the last decade is that the Tea Party is a grassroots organization, when the aforementioned Koch Brothers and their ilk used Armey’s organization to pay for the buses to those town hall meetings. It’s not grassroots, it’s astro-turf, and I call shenanigans.
Sayonara, NRA. With an appalling number of crazy guys with guns shooting at people in public places this year, including volunteer firefighters in Webster, New York (which is the most recent as I write this, and I hope that’s still true when it’s published), your arguments are being shot down more quickly than those semiautomatic rifles you defend. I look forward to you being completely marginalized.
Farewell, child molesters and those who cover up for them. The Catholic Church and college football teams may continue to believe otherwise, but high status does not confer immunity from the law, or from the disgust and horror of the larger community. I only regret that the legal ways we have to express this disgust and horror are limited to unpleasantly long jail sentences and massive fines.
And while we’re bidding adieu to those who would protect male privilege at all costs, let’s include those with attitudes which assume women are some strange, alien species. Whether it’s Rush Limbaugh deriding a woman with the audacity to desire health coverage for all of her parts, or Todd Akin and his view of female anatomy, it’s clear that men alone can’t run this national conversation anymore. Those of us with vaginas, cervixes, uteri and ovaries have decided we’re the experts about what it’s like to have them. And we vote.
Goodbye to some who made my life what it is, for better or for worse, I’ll miss Nora Ephron, Levon Helm, Davy Jones and George McGovern. You live on in my heart, my memory, and my Cloud.
Bye bye, baby.
—
Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, wishes you a healthy and happy 2013. Better days, folks.
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December 30th, 2012 at 5:01 pm
“Goodbye to some who made my life what it is, for better or for worse, I’ll miss Nora Ephron, Levon Helm, Davy Jones and George McGovern. You live on in my heart, my memory, and my Cloud.
Bye bye, baby.”
You just made me well up. Love you.
December 31st, 2012 at 1:31 am
The Catholic Church and college football teams who ignore or try to cover up child abuse can kiss my Black ass…shit, they may like that…damn.
December 31st, 2012 at 7:57 am
Isn’t parting supposed to be a sweet sorrow?
December 31st, 2012 at 3:02 pm
Elections can’t be bought?
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, collectively, the two presidential candidates received more than $1 billion dollars in donations, and the one who got the most, also won the election. President Obama pulled in about $715 million, which was about $275 million more than Mitt Romney.
Koch brothers, Smoch Brothers! Obama’s Hollywood supporters and folks like George Soros opened up their checkbooks and made sure their guy won.
Regarding the “evil” NRA, every time the anti-gun folks talk about gun control, they always talk in terms of AK-47 assault weapons. But anyone with an ounce sense and who actually follows the news knows they are really after ALL guns.
For example, let’s look at my hometown of Chicago. They banned private ownership of all handguns in 1982, after which crime rates jumped up. Chicago’s murder rate 30 years after the ban is still one of the highest in the nation. Today, it is about four times higher than the murder rate in New York City and twice as high as in Los Angeles — cities with populations that are much larger. Ironically, the city didn’t get around to banning assault weapons until 1992.
What this meant is that up until the recent US Supreme Court ruling in June, despite the fact that I spent 20 years of honorable service in the military and do not have any history of mental illness or criminal behavior, it would have been illegal for me to own a handgun in Chicago to defend myself and my family.
That isn’t just stupid, it’s just plain wrong.
Regarding child molesters, here’s a news flash: It isn’t just the Catholic Church and college football teams that are guilty of not doing the right thing. How about the California’s teachers union?
http://theworthyadversary.com/1424-ca-teachers-unions-protecting-child-molesters-jobs
Partisan logic — bah, humbug!
December 31st, 2012 at 3:29 pm
The California teachers union supports raping children? Really?
And if you wanted a gun, there were and still are plenty of gang members who will happily sell you one, for cash. It’s not a gun control issue, it’s a gang control issue. Chicago has a long, long record of sucking at gang control. Maybe if the Young Lords’ lawyer quit the Chicago gang the way the Young Lords’ New York lawyer did to work (eventually) for Fox News, it wouldn’t be as much of an issue.
The Republicans have been envious of the so-called Hollywood support of the Democratic Party for a couple decades now, curiously overlooking their Hollywood supporters. A FRACTION of their supporters include Clint Eastwood, Adam Sandler, Tom Selleck, Andy Garcia, Vince Vaughn, Jon Voight, Robert Duvall, Kelsey Grammer, Chuck Norris, Freddie Prinze (the one still alive, which is more than I can say for his career), Alan Jackson, Gary Sinise, Fred Thompson, Gene Simmons (not Jean; she died three years ago), Dennis Miller, Alice Cooper, Kid Rock, Larry the Cable Guy, that “you might be a redneck” dipshit, and, of course, Meat Loaf.
Industry trades report that Hollywood Republicans actually contributed more to Mitt than Hollywood Democrats did to Barack. But they sure do like to keep that kinda quiet.
I wonder why?
December 31st, 2012 at 5:55 pm
Mike — Re: Hollywood Republicans. C’mon, Mike. Who are you kidding? Anyone with a pulse who lives here can see the vast majority of Hollywood folks lean Democratic. Why do you think Obama made so many fundraising trips here? At least six that I can remember — which is easy since, his motorcade almost always zoomed by my office on the way to LAX. During one of his earliest trips, traffic was so snarled on Wilshire I had to walk all eight miles home, and there was bumper-to-bumper traffic on every cross street almost the entire way. It was insane, with accounts that it took people five-six hours to drive home.
You need to cite the sources of those “industry trades” as I only remember one visit to Hollywood by Mitt.
And yes, the California Teachers Union routinely shields child predators — along with incompetent boobs, serial malingerers, and other sundry societal cancers in their ranks. Any organization that makes it almost impossible to fire someone involved in serious wrongdoing or incompetence — particularly when it involves the development of children — is doing society a disservice, not helping it.
December 31st, 2012 at 6:28 pm
Divine Martha -
So long…Farewell..Just watched “Sound of Music” again last weekend and renewed my girl crush on Christopher Plummer.
2012 is behind us. Looking forward to a wonderful 2013! Yes?
January 1st, 2013 at 7:20 am
Russ, the “fact” that the vast majority of Hollywood leans Democratic doesn’t mean that Mike is wrong. It means that Hollywood Republicans contributed more money. You know, the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson are only three people, but together they donated nearly $80 million to Romney (via various PACs).
Obama raised more money, and he raised it from more people. You know, voting with their wallets.
If you can find any place in my column where I defend teachers for being child molesters, then I’ll apologize.
January 1st, 2013 at 6:38 pm
How does the fact that Obama raised money from more people change the fact that the election was bought?
Personally, I think the current campaign donation and stumping period is insane.
So much time and energy is now wasted on campaigning rather than governing, there should probably be a presidential campaign time limit of, say, 90 days for the primaries, and 90 days following the conventions. The incumbent, because he/she already has an advantage of resources and access, would only get the 90-day period following his/her party’s convention.
Congressional candidates would have the same 90-day campaign limit.
Maximum donations for all would be capped at a modest amount (say $100), and the cap total would be fixed. This model would closely mirror the current DOD ethics regulations involving gifts to DOD personnel.
If the president and congress had such campaigning limitations, maybe they’d actually have time to get something done.
January 1st, 2013 at 6:48 pm
Martha — One more thing. I can’t take your criticism of Republican PAC donators seriously because you do not cite or compare the totals of similar PAC donations on the Democratic side — say from folks like George Soros, who has spent tens of millions (perhaps even hundreds of millions) bankrolling an entire network of media and other organizations supporting Democratic candidates and issues.
As I alluded to above, I think the whole campaign donation system — both Republican and Democratic — is corrupt and out of control.
January 1st, 2013 at 7:34 pm
After George Soros, name me another.
Look, I would much prefer a system where we get the money out of politics. To the best of my knowledge, that has never happened. The Supreme Court has ruled that money equals speech. They come closest in Europe, but you know, that’s socialism.
In any case, most of the contributions to the Obama campaign were under $200, I believe. He got more money because more people thought he was worth the contribution.
Which I guess is my way of saying that, this year anyway, democracy had a liberal bias.
January 2nd, 2013 at 6:00 pm
Martha — I don’t follow who donates what to which campaign. All I know is Obama came to Hollywood about a half-dozen times to exclusively schmooze with the rich folks here (not the great unwashed masses), and got tens of millions in donations in the process.
If you were, in fact, the least bit sincere in your indignation, you probably could have Googled a list of the wealthy patrons Obama got donations from (here and elsewhere) so you could objectively compare and contrast it to Romney’s list.
After less than two minutes of Googling, I found data on OenSecrets.org that seriously challenges your “under $200″ assertion:
https://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/donordemCID.php?id=N00009638
For both the male and female demographic, the vast majority of money Obama garnered was from donors paying $1000 or more. In fact, the biggest chunk according to Federal Election Commission data — just a tad under $200 million — came from just 47,500 people.
Democracy has a liberal bias? Yeah, and I’m the king of France.
January 2nd, 2013 at 7:23 pm
Romney came to New York a bunch of times to raise money, as did both Bushes, Dole, Reagan, etc. etc. Poliyicians go where the money is.
An Obama campaign worker said today that Obama and Romney had the same number of large donors. (I think they said over $1000 dollars, but they might have said $50,000). The difference is that these large donors constituted 2/3 of Romney’s total donations, while only 1/3 of Obama’s, in other words, Obama had thousands more small donors,
Romney had more soft money, from PACs and 501C4s.
But more individual donors supported Demoxrats. As did more voters.