My Apolitical Vacation

When I left on vacation 13 days ago I had every intention of blogging at least a little bit along the way. Granted, I was desperately in need of a vacation from our current climate of political insanity, but I was in a surprisingly good mood, fresh from the big win in health care legislation and ready to take on the next uphill battle on the list. So I packed up the MacBook along with everything else and went on my way.

The first couple of days I kept up on the news and in spite of very little free time I was able to crank out a quick post from my iPhone while traveling on Amtrak. (Not an easy task for someone like myself with big thumbs and poor typing skills, making due on a teeny tiny keyboard while bouncing over rough rails at high speeds.)

After that? Well, good intentions became just that: intentions. After a couple of mornings of missing newspapers there was this period of calm that came over me and I found that political ignorance can indeed equal bliss. Even so, I found there really is no political proof bubble. You can ignore the papers and turn off the television, but sooner or later your “happy place” will be invaded. Mine was no exception. The first time it happened I wrote about it in my one and only vacation blog post, where dining with friends gave way to nausea in the form of a campaign photo of John McCain and Sarah Palin pretending to eat barbecued ribs that stared back at me from the wall above our table.

The second time was the following day, and it was then that I decided I didn’t need the stress and that I would rather enjoy a week off from angry typing and that the blog posts could wait. Part of the reason for the trip was that my offspring will soon be graduating from high school, and we have toured various colleges both in our state and all over the country for the last several vacations. On this day we were looking at Washington University in St. Louis. We were taking the walking tour of campus, and as we headed into the athletic center there, our student tour guide became quite animated as she paused to point out excitedly that “this was THE very site of the 2008 VP debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin!” She went into great detail describing the event and how excited they all were to be hosting it, how they had to transform the entire area, on and on and on. I thought my head might explode as I heard equally happy chatter among the parents in the group as they echoed various well-known quotes from that night like “Can I call ya’ Joe?” Apparently one or two of them were actually Palin fans and were absolutely bubbly while reminiscing over that line from the debate. As tempting as it was, I restrained myself from ruining their day by telling them Palin was merely stupid and not just being “folksy” when she asked “O’Biden” that question.

As if having a college tour oddly associated with Palin trivia wasn’t unlikely enough, there was yet a third odd injection of politics into an otherwise normal vacation. This one was rather ugly, (well, more so than the other two anyway) and while it was “Palin-free” I would not have been the least bit surprised to see Palin herself hanging out with this group, except for the fact that there would probably be no pricey fees in it for her. Besides, it’s more likely that she would have been shopping inside the building rather than protesting out on the street in front of it. This little event took place while we were sightseeing on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. We were walking past Water Tower Place where there was a charming little group from the LaRouche movement protesting outside and holding up the now familiar pictures of Obama with a scrawled on Hitler mustache, encouraging impeachment for no particular reason. Not surprisingly they didn’t seem to have many takers. They were getting about the same reception I would imagine one getting if there were a bunch of Tea-baggers recruiting outside of a Neiman Marcus. Avoidance and LOTS of whispering.

So those three interruptions in my otherwise stress-free vacation were enough of a reminder to convince me that a politics-free vacation would be the better way to go. I spent the rest of it for the most part avoiding any headlines that didn’t just jump right out and present themselves to me.

Of course, I’m sure nothing really eventful happened anyway right?

So, what did I miss?

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The GOP And The “Liberal Media Rag” (with Video)

For those of us who were counting on hope and change after our last Presidential election, the past year has been a big disappointment. We’ve come to the sad realization that some things may never change.

Of course I’m talking about the farce of the “Liberal Media” and their continuing role as the enabler of the GOP. The role they played with the Bush Administration for eight years, including rolling over while Bush and Cheney moved ahead with their war of choice (and profits) being one of the worst examples, sadly has continued since the election. In my opinion, it’s gotten even worse.

There are a few exceptions. There are still a few members of the media who call them out, like Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann to name a couple, who aren’t afraid to call out Obama and the Democrats as well when they see fit, and rightfully so. We could use a LOT more like them. Instead, we get more of the same.

Instead of pointing out what progress was made in the past year, what are we getting from the media? Just a parade of GOP talking points, and the infamous “blame game” that we weren’t allowed to play when Bush was in charge, which is now up and running again at warp-speed. Everything bad that has happened in the last nine years is now magically all Obama’s fault. As for the positive things he’s done in the past year? “What positive things?”

Crickets……

The most recent evidence of this nonsense has been the stimulus. The GOP, courtesy of the “media” tell us that it was very bad, created no jobs, and was a complete failure bordering on the apocalypse! Unless you were watching those exceptions to the media rule, you would have missed the part where all these GOP hypocrites were busy little beavers writing letters asking for the very same funds for their states, while happily skipping back home to their districts just in time for a photo-op with a giant check presentation, and taking all the credit for jobs saved. But make no mistake, the stimulus didn’t work!

Get ready for of the same this week with the upcoming health care summit, no doubt they will just pick up where they left off before the bill stalled. While you may think you want health care reform, you are wrong! Really! The Grand Obstructionist Party will be all over the airwaves this week telling you that you DO NOT want health care reform! What you DO want is tort reform. You also have no interest in health care reform because you want jobs! Of course, when it comes time to work on a jobs bill, then you will want something else. You are just so demanding, and yet so needy! Rest assured, the GOP will help you just as Bush did before, just as soon as you put them back in control three years from now! Help is on the way!

Below is a preview of what I think we will probably see more of this week. The GOP will play the media this way, just like they always do. For those of you who watch Morning Jackass Joe and his parrot Mika, I know this could almost be mistaken for a clip from that show (except that this “Joe” is attractive). I suppose it could be, but this is just what I think of when I see just about any daytime cable “news” show along with their GOP “guests and experts” on any given day. This week it’s health care. Next week, who knows.

So without further adieu, I give you the GOP and the “Liberal Media Rag”:

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