… plain and simple.

At the National Rifle Association convention, Nugent had said, “If Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”

“We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November… Our president, attorney general, our vice president, Hillary Clinton — they’re criminals, they’re criminals,” he added.

The Secret Service is looking into this. As a sidebar, if they are so damned secret, how come everyone knows about them?

But seriously, as much as I abhor the ground that dweebs like Jason Kenney, Vic Toews, Pierre Polievre et al trod upon, I would NEVER advocate violence of ANY kind against them!

Aren’t there laws against threats like these in the States?

What a pathetic excuse for a human being…

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

… according to GOP candidate Rick Santorum…  that fount of all things that make me glad that I’m not an American! The guy who makes the entire Harper Cabinet look reasonably sane! The Evangelic moron who… well, you get the picture…

Now what else might be targeted by Mr. Evil… hmmm…

Satan is targeting my bus this morning. The brakes seem rough.

Satan is targeting the Leafs. It’s the only explanation for Reimer’s poor goaltending.

Satan is targeting Vic Toews. Or maybe it’s the other way around but Satan doesn’t know it!

Satan is targeting my knee. Damned sore meniscus today.

Satan is targeting the Rideau Canal. How else can you explain the short season?

Satan is targeting Greece! Duh!

Satan is targeting Syria – for real.

Satan is targeting Caterpillar – oh, wait – Satan is the CEO.

What else is preoccupying  the ol’ Dark One these days? Anybody?

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

… apparently shares the political satire genes with her northern kin!

Good one!

Gotta meet these relatives one day! I think it would be a blast!

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

….because Rick Perry is a slow, slow, drunk train wreck…

“Commerce, Education, and the, uh, what’s the third one?” Perry said as he pointed to his head while trying to recall the third federal agency he rails against every day on the stump.

When Romney helpfully offered, “The EPA,” the Texas governor glanced over thankfully before coming to his senses, waving off his rival, and attempting to move on.

Yet co-moderator John Harwood, a veteran of The Wall Street Journal who now works for both The New York Times and CNBC, seized the moment and would not let it pass so quickly.

“Seriously? Is EPA the one you were talking about?” he asked.

Perry replied, “No sir, no sir,” again seeming to wish the moment would end.

“You can’t name the third one?” Harwood again said.

Perry, now seeming to see his political life flashing before his eyes, replied, “The third agency of government I would do away with (pause), the Education, the, uh, Commerce, and, let’s see (pause), I can’t. The third one, I can’t. Sorry.”

Then, “Oops.”

Michele Bachmann is a moron:

Some of her gaffes — such as mixing up actor John Wayne with serial killer John Wayne Gacy on the day she entered the campaign in June — are only groaners, but others – such as saying a vaccine against a sexually transmitted disease caused mental retardation — are campaign-damaging, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.

During a campaign swing in Iowa recently, the Minnesota congresswoman, citing a report she said she heard, stated that 59,000 undocumented immigrants entered the United States “from Yemen, from Syria. These are nations that are state sponsors of terror.”

The State Department says Yemen is not a state sponsor of terrorism, and the Border Patrol report Bachmann referenced said only 663 of the 59,000 apprehended illegal immigrants from nations other than Mexico had ties to countries that have links to terrorism, the Times reported.

And the über-Christian right will never vote for Romney because he’s a, uh, Mormon and not near conservative “enough”.(?)

Ron Paul? Meh. He’ll run as a third party candidate in the end…

So, barring any major mistakes by the President, I am predicting clear sailing right through to a second term, no?

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

Yup.

Those crazy Americans! Ain’t they adorable?

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

WTF? Why not?

Some Americans think that this might be a way to go…

Mr. Damon has not expressed a desire to run for office, but he has become known for his political activism. During the 2008 presidential campaign, he endorsed Barack Obama and called Sarah Palin’s story “a bad Disney movie.”

Recently, the actor said he’s “disgusted” by the debt-ceiling debate that had consumed Washington and said he is willing to pay higher taxes.

“I’m so disgusted, man. It’s criminal that like, you know, so little is asked of people who are getting so much; I mean, I don’t mind paying more,” Mr. Damon said. He was in Washington with his mother, a teacher, to promote the Save Our Schools march.

“I’d rather pay for taxes than cut like Reading is Fundamental or Head Start or some of these programs that are really helping kids,” he said. Mr. Damon also criticized the Tea Party for being willing to drive the American economy “off a cliff.”

Hmmmmm…

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

President Obama is warning of one if the debt ceiling is not lifted.

The American government will exceed its legislated debt ceiling of $14.3 trillion in August.

Trillion.

14,300,000,000,000.

Holy crap.

According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (yeah, they’re weenies and you’ll seldom hear me say anything good about them), our debt stands at $559 billion. That puts our national debt about 4% of the American debt. And we have about 10% of the population.

Wow.

Neil Macdonald wrote this article a few weeks back on the American attitude to debt. In short, the goal of  many Americans is not to pay your debts, but to try everything in your power to wriggle your way out of them altogether or to negotiate a lower payback.

Before he dropped out of the Presidential race, that looney-tune Donald Trump basically said “meh” when asked what happens when the government hits the legislated debt ceiling and is no longer able to borrow money and service their debts.

“I don’t think you have to default,” he told a White House reporter. “You’re going to have to make a deal someplace.”

And this is a normal attitude of many who inhabit the land to our south.

Watch commercial TV in this country for a few hours and you’ll see what I mean. It’s strewn with advertisements for companies that claim they’ll “stand up to your creditors.”

Owe more than $10,000 in back taxes? Hire us and we’ll negotiate with the IRS for you. You might only have to pay a fraction of what you owe!

Big credit card bills? Hire us and we’ll deal with those awful banks. We may persuade them to forgive some debt!

Can’t pay your mortgage? Hire us and we’ll negotiate a “principal reduction.” There are even government agencies to help with that one.

Try Googling “personal debt negotiate reduction” and look at the number of hits. Seven million plus.

Pair this thinking with the widespread opposition to any further government borrowing and Trump’s make-a-deal idea is crack for the masses.

So whose fault is it?

Politicians that fall on the Tea Party side of the wacky ledger say “Hey, no worries! We’ll keep taxes low, privatize just about everything and no one needs to feel any pain!” And the voters buy these lines eagerly! They fear those damned socialists in the White House who are asking to put the country into more debt. Yet they had better leave my services alone.

And it is a-OK to walk away from your debt and damn the consequences.

I don’t like this mix. Too much globally depends on a healthy – or at least a breathing American economy.

Neil Macdonald is scared by all this – and so am I.

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

Thanks to Warren Kinsella for posting this on his site.

As a father, he, um, takes a bit of issue with complete strangers touching his kids in what would ordinarily be a very inappropriate manner. He says:

I am a big, big Obama fan, as regular lurkers will know. But I think these new Transportation Security Administration rules – wherein they are permitted to paw your privates, in effect – are insane. And Obama is insane for letting them happen.

I don’t give a rat’s ass what the Fourth Amendment says. If some bureaucrat touches my kids, I’m drifting him

So yeah, travellers can go through one of those body scan machines (If they are available in the airport from which they are departing. I have no idea if these things are in each and every American airport.) – which I personally don’t have a big problem with – better than personal contact. But then, I read this:

According to information the T.S.A. has shared or published, the airport pat-downs are supposed to be conducted by officers the same sex as the traveler, and passengers can request a private screening and have a traveling companion present during the search. Agents are not permitted to look inside passengers’ underwear or reach inside a skirt, and children 12 and younger are supposed to receive a modified pat-down.

Even passengers who submit to the new body scanners may be subject to a pat-down if the machine detects an anomaly. In other cases, passengers may be randomly selected for a physical search.

Number one, more of a reason than ever to delay visits to the US of A until some measure of sanity has returned to that paranoid nation. Number two, if I do go to the States and if anyone touches my kids, well, I’d pull a “Warren”. And yes, there will be a scene.

Big deal that under-12s get a modified pat-down. Yeah, right. Just try.

Hmmm… just realising that even writing this will put me on some sort of “watch” list.

Too bad.

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

… although I completely realize that MOST Americans are NOT like these buffoons… still….

Check this out.

An elementary school in a place called Prescott, Arizona is a pretty diverse place to be. White, blacks and Mexican Americans all attend and, well, they seem to get along.

I say they seem to get along because recently there was a vote taken by the kids on what their new school mural should look like. And guess what, they chose one that depicts their own faces.. the white one, brown ones and black ones.

OK. If you are prone to high BP when you see or read something that is so fucking warped (no, I don’t use that word in these spaces that often, but this merits the f-bomb), that you can literally feel the blood pounding thorough your arteries, then sit down before reading on.

The mural has been defaced. The kids have been taunted by cowardly racist slurs. Even a local politician, who also happens to be a talk radio host (my note: why doesn’t that surprise me) has taken up the “cause”, demanding that the faces be “lightened” or that the mural be removed completely!

This how Wonkette describes things:

And these children, for the past several months as this happy mural encouraging “green transportation” was being painted by local artists, have been treated to the city of Prescott’s finest citizens driving by and yelling “Nigger” and “Spic” at this school wall painted with pictures of the children who attend the school. And this has been encouraged by a city councilman, Steve Blair, who uses his local radio talk show to rile up these people and demand the mural be destroyed.

Again – this is an ELEMENTARY school: Kindergarten to Grade 5.

What shit is this? How can there be such crap that still goes on in this seemingly “enlightened” and progressive society to the south?

Some morons are even saying that is more Obama propaganda!

So, you’d think the school would tell these racist assholes to hit the road, right?

Noooo…

So after all the bickering and utter batshit insanity, the school’s principal, Jeff Lane, asked that the faces be lightened. Not because of the race thing or the racist stuff! Ha ha ha, not at all! But because tonally — like artistic tonally, not color tonally — the painting wasn’t working:

We asked them to fix the shading on the children’s faces. We were looking at it from an artistic view. Nothing at all to do with race.

NOTHING TO DO WITH RACE???????

Crap. I have to stop writing. I feel my own BP going up!

The tones seem OK to me!

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

In a move that once again leads this scribbler to question the sanity of some of our neighbours to the south, Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat in Massachusetts has gone red.

I watched some of the Democrat candidate’s gaffes last night on Jon Stewart and yeah, she was a real piece of work who seemingly couldn’t campaign her way out of a paper bag. But an outright defeat in a state where Obama crushed the GOP only 15 months ago? Cripes. Is the right wing-nut contingent really THAT effective in the U.S.?

An Ex-Centrefold?

Is the US of A learning lessons from the Italian democracy where they elect ex-porn stars as MPs??

Wow. She’s some scary….

In any case, the President had better start pulling some rabbits out of his hat or it will be one term and out!

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario