When the Founders Liberated Iwo Jima

Or ended slavery or invented the automobile or something. Aside from Glenn Beck's schizophrenic paradolia you can't get further from actual history (or math or science) than Michelle Bachmann's  Tea Party History for Dummies:

Bachman, speaking at an Iowans for Tax Relief event, recounted the early “remarkable” America, a nation where “it didn’t matter the color of their skin, it didn’t matter their language, it didn’t matter their economic status.”
“Once you got here,” she added, “we were all the same.”

Read more: http://www.thirdage.com/news/bachmann-slavery-watch-anderson-cooper-blast-bachmann-rewriting-history_1-26-2011#ixzz1CCCcTGzc

Yep. And no Indians were hurt in the making of this nation. At least her handlers got ole' crazy eyes to blink once in awhile. My guess is that command was telepromptered every thirty seconds on the button. You can lead a Bachmann to blinking but you can't get her thinking.

THE RULES

We're watching lil' Estella for the week while her Mom is checking out optimal living situations in Fresno. A losing proposition, I fear. Optimal conditions in Fresno, I mean, not the baby sitting. We were giving a set a rules in the hopes we wouldn't undo in five days all the precise child rearing that Dragon Mom has done with this tot. I hate to break it to her but it won't take that long. Usually when we do long term kindercare for the other grandkids we are given just one rule, well, more a suggestion than a rule - please return the children undamaged. Generally we comply. But this time we got a different set of instructions-

Daily routine:
8:00 - wake up
8:01 - potty time
8:02 - breakfast (organic mango juice, granola, egg white omelet from free range organically fed chickens)
8:03 - 9:00- Rosetta Stone - Mandarin
9:00 - 10:00- Rosetta Stone Cantonese
10:00 - 12:00 - Practice ballet - please work on her  battlement glisse
Lunch - organic free range carrots and fair trade raisins  with hand ground peanut butter (please- no Jif!)
And so on...

And then there's the rules:

Wash hands
No potty mouth
No McDonald's
No more than 1 hour of TV per day
And so on...(if there is something fun for a kid to do she isn't supposed to do it)

One hour of TV? What am I? Mary Fucking Poppins? That's why they had nannies in the old days. Nannies, TV, same thing. Potty mouth may have something to do with the kid's sense of humor. The little darling spent the whole ride back from Rockville trying out her jokes on me. They all had something to do with poop. Which is OK with me since most of my jokes aren't any more sophisticated. What cracked her up the most was telling me that when her Mom got up in the morning she put poop on her shoulder. Then she asked me why I wasn't laughing and I had to tell her that her mother wouldn't approve. Then we both started laughing. I mean, if you knew her mom, her putting poop on her shoulder is kind of funny.  Potty mouth, indeed. I don't know what Mother expects when the kid is being reared in an environment where people are putting poop on their shoulders.

The Final Solution

Makes sense. Rep Gohmert (R-Tarded)* has decided that the easiest way to keep high capacity semi automatic firearms out of the hands of crazy people is to arm more crazy people. Like the ones in Congress. Good idea. It is clear that DC suffers from an appalling lack of firearms. Even the NRA agrees that the clinically insane should be limited to single shot 22's and derringers. So Reps Shuler and Gohmert are going to make us feel more secure because they have the ability to trade rounds with their constituents at the next town hall meeting. I don't care how many pistols you're packing or how many Dirty Harry fantasies you got tucked in your cranium from reading multiple copies of the Armed Citizen, chances are you're going to be hugging the ground with the rest of us. The only ones standing may be a small percentage of cops, combat infantry veterans and Columbia Heights gangbangers and 2/3'rds of those aren't going to open up on a crowd of people anyway. Sweet Jesus, the one armed citizen who was there in Tuscon admitted he came close to shooting the wrong guy and  how about Rep Franks (R-stupid)? - "I wish there had been one more gun there that day in the hands of a responsible person, that's all I have to say,"  How about saying something that addresses the problem of crazy people with guns,  you dumb motherfucker, instead of being an NRA parrot? That's bullshit and the NRA is bullshit. That's why I quit it - the redneck politics were bad enough but the sheer stupidity babbling from the mouths of duly elected NRA hand puppets is too much to bear. Why is the dialog about hate speech instead of keeping assault weapons out of the hands of crazies?

*hat tip to Ironicus

Well, She Didn't Mean "That"

Apparently even the Palin people are able to distinguish  between a United States representative and a caribou or even a Muslim. The  screen shot shows representatives in the cross-hairs targeted for their votes on the affordable  health care bill. It was removed from the web site shortly after the tragic shooting of Representative Giffords. I'm sure the whole crosshairs and targeted thing was purely symbolic. Kind of like the symbolic brick through Giffords district office window after the health care vote. I'm also sure this will be dismissed as the action of a lone disturbed lunatic. Now I don't know what this guy's political leanings are or even if he has any, but, aside from Muslim terrorists, it sure seems like the majority of disturbed, heavily armed lunatics are coming from the right wing. If Homeland Security isn't keeping an eye on these people they aren't doing their job.

Welcome to Sharon Angle's Second Amendment Remedy for America where any deranged loon with a semi automatic weapon can effect policy. It's a great country - get a couple dozen irrationally fearful racist loons with AK's together and you got a militia. Get a few thousand together and you got yourself a Tea Party.

No, That Wasn't a New Episode of the Walking Dead...

that you stumbled upon. That was Dick Clark's New Years Rockin Eve starring Ryan Seacrest, some C list celebrities, a scary chick with blue lips, some convenience store workers and, down in the crowd, Typhoid Jenny. Ryan passed it off to Dick to ring in the New Year just as he's done for the last 97 years. Now I'm all for someone working through their disability and carrying on like a real trooper but, c'mon, you're scaring the kids. We generally try to shield the Kid from disturbing images and the wife and I kept looking to each other and the Kid, wondering if we should change the channel, but we were too far into the countdown and rode that creepy, barely flesh covered marionette into 2011. At least the strings didn't show. The Kid looked more puzzled than freaked anyway. Ah, youth. I only hope that when time runs a garbage truck over my head I have enough sense to retire.

And as for Jenny McCarthy. I hope she catches the flu.