New Year's Resolution***

Same one as last year. Same one as every year:

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

From me and Mrs Franklin to you and yours, may you have a Happy New Year's Eve! By that we mean, drink all you want and drive as fast as you can...let's thin out the herd a little.

And to those of you who survive the night, may your 2012 be happy, healthy and prosperous...

***(I've finally given up on losing that 5 extra pounds. Screw it, it's too hard. Besides, it's 10 pounds by now. I'm an old and beaten man, and I know it...now would somebody please pass the pie and ice cream?)

The most contemptible blog post of the year

As 2012 nears, I've been looking back at quite a few blogs I've read this year and bookmarked for future reference. I don't know why I didn't write about this one before, but better late than never. You really have to read the whole post instead of just the few little bits I'm quoting here -- this person makes Glenn Beck look like an educated saint.

Homeless in Hawaii

Dr. Diane Medved is the wife of conservative pustule pundit Michael Medved, a man for whom I hold nothing but contempt. Unfortunately, his wife is just as bad. A dinner conversation between these two must be fascinating.

Mrs. Medved is really, really upset that the view of some homeless people in Hawaii has ruined her vacation -- which, incidentally, she makes sure to point out will be tax-deductible as her husband "works" during these trips.

Some highlights from this remarkable piece of chicken crap:

Their tents pitched under banyans in parks and their groaning shopping carts draped with plastic bags stationed along sidewalks remind us that hospitable liberal government would rather enable freeloading on public property than business to high per-square-foot rent-paying establishments.

My god, the horror! Let's get rid of those damned public places -- that way I won't have to look at these homeless vagrants!

On last night's walk, we saw a guy lying asleep on the Kalakaua thoroughfare sidewalk. Near his extended form he'd laid out a couple necklaces, ostensibly for sale. His fingers clutched some kind of rifle, even in his sleep. His clothes and person were dark with dirt, in contrast to the white sidewalk. What an appealing incentive to spend big bucks in Fendi, Coach, and the other glitzy stores a few feet away.

You people are really ruining my trip -- how can I possibly step around you to go blow my money on my completely unnecessary designer goods?!

We've been privileged to come to Honolulu, where my husband works during our stays, many times over the years. I've never seen so many and such conspicuous homeless encampments, just plopped down in the most desirable footage on the planet.

You've just gotta love this bitch. Nowhere does she stop to ponder about how these people ended up in this situation, or what she as an individual or we as a society might be able to do to help -- except to mention that she thinks that Hawaii really needs more mental health centers for these folks. Of course, forget about taxing her to help pay for those centers. Heaven forfend!

And people sometimes wonder why I have such absolute contempt for so many right-wing idiots. I have no doubt that there are very, very many well-meaning conservatives out there who have well-reasoned opinions and have hearts to match -- many of them are friends or even relatives. But let me tell y'all, these lunatics like the iron bitch Medved make all of you look bad.

Same As It Ever Was

In this season of joy and rebirth (you know, the Winter solstice and all that jazz that predates Christianity by a few thousand years), it's important to remember who we hate.

We hate socialists. They advocate sharing the wealth. They give healthcare to all. They favor the weakest over the strongest. You know, like Jesus. We hate socialism--and you better keep your goddamn socialist hands off my Social Security and Medicare!

We hate the poor. They're a drag, a well known drag. And there are so many more of them than there used to be! Let's ignore them and maybe they'll go away.

We especially hate Islamo-fascists. Except for the Saudi's. Because they do business with the Bush family. So, even though they comprised most of the 9-11 hijackers, and even though their society is stuck somewhere in the Middle Ages, and even though they are totally, violently, anti-democracy and anti-equality, and even though their money funds radical, fundamentalist, "Hate The West" madrassas all around the world, the Saudi's are our friends. Just ask the Bush family and their business partners.

But most of all, we hate liberal progressives. We've hated them all the way back to the Enlightenment. What a bunch of busy-bodies! We were much happier as illiterate peasants, shackled by a lack of education, blinded by religious superstitions, picking through the filth, hoping the lord of the manor wouldn't take our daughters for his pleasure, our sons for his wars, and all of our food for his table--but completely powerless if he did. "Keep us stoopid!" is our proud motto.

My War On Christmas

The guy across the street has done up his house and yard in what can only be called a real hillbilly Christmas motif. You got your quarter mile of lights and multiple Santas and reindeer and snowmen and angels and a manger complete with Baby Jesus and wise men (some of whom look suspiciously like Osama Bin Laden) and, who's that way in the back? Winnie the Pooh!

Did I mention the tape loop of every effing Christmas song ever recorded? Well, he has that, too. And he cranks that mother up so that everybody can share in the joy of the season. I tell you people drive by in gape mouth wonderment.

He does this every year, starting sometime around Thanksgiving. And every year Mrs. Franklin and I grit our teeth, because hey, it's Christmas! And besides, the guy has young kids, and blah, blah, blah...

And we don't want to be the neighborhood Scrooges--but Jesus Christ! Winnie the Pooh?!

Anyway, today I saw this quote on a website somewhere, "I cannot eat your prayers."

That pretty much sums it up, OK? So, if you really believe in the true meaning of Christmas, please don't buy any more inflatable Santas or another strand of lights or one more "So And So Sings The Joyous Songs of Christmas" CD.

Instead, give that money to the nearest food bank or homeless shelter.

Why?

Because it would be the Christian thing to do...

Aiding And Abetting The Enemy

Since the Republican debates just won't go away--not unlike a particularly nasty venereal disease--and since the level of the debates has been, to be kind, abysmally low, I thought I'd help them out by coming up with a line of questions that should liven things up a little.

I think we can all agree that money is our one true God here in the good old USA. And the Walton family (of Wal Mart fame) has been the biggest capitalist success story of the past 40 years. (If old Sam Walton were still alive he would be worth 3 or 4 times as much as Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. As it is, his immediate heirs are all worth $20 billion or more each.)

The Walton's business strategy has been a ridiculously simple one: continue to demand that your suppliers lower their costs year after year. That means breaking unions, cutting workers, and ultimately shipping millions of jobs overseas. Until everything is made in China. Along the way, the Wal Mart economics of scale drive their competition to either do the same or go out of business.

It's the kind of unfettered free market approach that makes guys at business schools go all giddy and weak in the knees and Republicans everywhere break into spontaneous applause. Break the unions? Yeah! Drive down labor costs? Yeah!! Move all manufacturing off-shore to a place without any environmental regulations, and a billion cheap, disposable workers with no rights? Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!!!

So here's my first question for Newt and Rick and Michelle and Willard Mitt and Ron and other Rick (and you too Jeb, hiding in the bushes): as red blooded American patriots, how can you defend the end result of the Walton's highly successful business strategy, which has been to transfer enormous amounts of America's wealth directly to the Chinese Communists?

'Cause that's where it ends up. Oh sure, there are a handful of Chinese millionaires and I'm sure that they're enjoying the fruits of capitalism to the fullest. Private jets, and Bentley's, and shopping sprees in Paris and New York. But the wealth of these new Chinese "capitalists" is just a tiny, tiny fraction of the amount in question.

And more importantly, they can only continue to prosper with the permission and under the guidance of their government. And that government is still a Communist one. A Communist one that is starting to flex its muscles around the world--usually in direct competition to American interests. They need oil and minerals--we need oil and minerals. And these are finite things. We continue to send billions and billions of dollars to our fiercest competitor. As a nation we get weaker while the Walton's get richer.

Here's my second question for our distinguished panel of Republican worthies: if you all truly love this country as much as you profess to, what are you prepared to do about this?

The $10,000 Man

"The very rich...are different from you and me."

--F. Scott Fitzgerald

Poor Willard Mitt Romney. He went to a very good school. He was elected governor by the voters of one of our better educated states. For what it's worth, he apparently ran the Olympics about as well as they can be run in any non-totalitarian country. Along the way he made a lot of money. He made it by gutting companies and firing people, but hey, that's the modern American way.

Anyway, don't ask how he got it, ask how much he got. Romney got so much that he can afford to spend many millions on a house just to tear it down and build a larger, more expensive one. And this isn't his principle residence either. This is a vacation home.

Judging by our usual standards Willard Mitt Romney has had an extremely successful life.

And yet, through all this, he never learned something fundamental about the American people.

While most of us desperately long to be rich and cling to the fantasy that it's just around the corner, none of us like to have our faces rubbed in it. But he can't help himself. See, there are people like Willard Mitt Romney and then there are the rest of us: The help. We are interchangeable and disposable. He needn't bother to learn our names.

There is only so much hypocrisy that even the most hypocritical of us, and by that I mean all you Republicans, can stand.

So here Willard Mitt finds himself, successful, wealthy, seemingly the perfect Republican candidate. And despite all these things, he's running a poor second to a seriously flawed buffoon, whose truest calling in this life would be as a carny barker. Newt "Will Rogers Never Met Me" Gingrich.

Money can buy you many things. But it definitely cannot buy you love and it seemingly will not buy Willard Mitt Romney his party's nomination.

Insignificance

J. Danforth Quayle, who many of you may remember as one of our more laughable Vice Presidents, ("No Jack Kennedy"? Hell, he was no Roman Hruska), has weighed in on the 2012 Republican presidential contenders.

Quayle, who is most famous for the trouble he had with words from a 3rd grade spelling test, and whose most recent contribution to democracy was the siring of Young Ben Quayle, Arizona's "ass-kicking" freshman Congressman, (that's what Young Ben promised to do when he got to Washington and who am I to argue with the scion of such a distinguished family?), has used the sacred podium of The Arizona Republic to give his endorsement, which is worth more than gold, to one Willard Mitt Romney. Say what you will, but Rich White Guys stick together.

Quayle's bloviating contains the expected potshots at President Obama. (No Republican can be truly whole without them.) And I quote, "As Americans observe the wreckage of our country over the last three years..." Three years? Really? So the country was wrecked on Obama's watch? What about the eight years prior to that? When we were ruled by a simpleton and a sadist? Those don't count, huh? Oh Danny, Danny, Danny. What a sad and empty little man you are!

Here's another pearl from J. Danforth: "Because of President Barack Obama's (Hey he left out the Hussein! Somebody's ghost writer is slipping!) failed leadership, Washington has become dysfunctional."

No, Danny, Washington is dysfunctional because your party takes its marching orders from a radio talk show host and a lobbyist, and its one concrete goal is to destroy the President. Not to create jobs, not to end the wars, not to restore our country. Just to destroy the "uppity" black guy. Oh yeah, and to keep taxes low on the very rich and the corporations, too.

I won't trouble you with the rest of his crap. Let's just say that J. Danforth has a very strong man crush on Willard Mitt, who is, in his eyes "capable", "a leader", with a "deep love of the principles that make America great." Cue the Battle Hymn of the Republic and light the fireworks.

Anyone with a conscience would be troubled by this complete disregard for facts. Not to worry. Quayle is a Republican, after all. And a close adherence to the truth doesn't really enter into that. Besides, the Republic's My Turn column has never been too concerned with facts. It is, after all, an opinion piece, and for today's GOP, opinion always trumps facts.

So there it is. One country club, silver spoon Republican schmuck endorsing another. And all is right in their world.

PS My favorite part of the whole Jan Brewer vs the Redistricting Commission imbroglio was the rumor that Young Ben Quayle's Mom, who apparently is right up there with Liz Cheney and Barb Bush in the roll call of vituperative bi-atches, upon hearing that the proposed new district would pit Young Ben against another Republican, maybe even a qualified one, (hahaha!), got on the phone to Jan "Chuck Tell Me What To Do" Brewer and demanded that she do something about it. Everybody involved denies it, of course, but it sure sounds like something that could happen in the grand old state of Arizona...

The $60,000 Question

What kind of moron(s) would pay Newt "I'm Not A Lobbyist, I'm a Historian" Gingrich $60,000 to talk about anything?

Furthermore, what kind of morons would then pay the first moron to sit and listen to Newt "Some Moron Just Paid Me $60,000 To Talk to You Morons" Gingrich?

And so the 2012 Tea Party Republican presidential talent show has a new flavor of the month. Of course, he's not "new" and the flavor is putrid, but still...

What the hell is going on here?

Apparently poor Willard Mitt "The Human Weather Vane" Romney is so hated by the Tea Party Republican base that they are willing to grasp at any straw, no matter how covered with manure it may be, to avoid embracing him.

Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and now Newt. A veritable murderer's row of skanky sleaze--yet all in their own way preferable to Willard Mitt "I Create Jobs By Firing People--Ask Me How!" Romney.

Now, how do you suppose that makes Willard Mitt "Just Tell Me What You Want Me To Be And I'll Be It**" Romney feel?

**(Does that make Willard Mitt sound kind of like a whore? The difference is that whores, even cheap ones, at least supply a service.)