TakeYourMedicine

Just because it's a beautiful day doesn't mean I don't get to be crabby. I've been tooling in the car this morning on a variety errands. It's sometimes dangerous to be in the car during call-in shows when you are loaded with opinions regarding the subject at hand. Add to that a presidential press conference, and you have a raving lunatic on your hands. All of which leads to this recitation of peeves. I won't call them pet peeves, out of respect to domesticated critters everywhere:

When Sydney, Jacqueline, and I were driving through a terrible spring snowstorm that had managed to close airports up and down the Eastern seaboard, I noticed that every third person in the big, nasty traffic jams that sent us home was on the goddam cellphone, yakking away happily as we inched forward in the several-inch thick soapy goo that separated tires from the roadway. What a fuckin' epidemic, thunk I, crabby first at our thwarted journey, next at the myriad stops due to the fender-benders that made the slow going even slower.

I'm not great with phones, anyway. I don't think that we always need to be available. When El Nino knocked out my phone one 80s winter, I was as happy as a clam. When I see the young high school and college set yakking as they walk down the street, and I know that I'm hurling toward certain curmudgeonhood. What a way to miss the sights and sounds around you! What age-specific narcissism! What intolerance on my part! At least they're not behind the wheel!

Except for the auto safety factor, this prejudice is small potatoes, I know. As we move from left to right in the graphic above, I go from peeve to outrage. What really triggered this round of bitchiness was a call-in show on immigration on the radio. It's a topic that makes me crazy, having read way too much about our worship of free trade instead of fair trade and of all the nefarious doings described in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, which should be required reading so that we all understand what other mischief the Bechtels and Halliburtons and their ilk are up to in creating fresh, new America-haters. If we are so worried about immigration, we ought to take a look at our policies throughout the world that force those who aren't making it at home to move to the US. And if anything has me extra-cranky these days, it's the congressional indulgence of pimping to the non-existent security threat on our southern border and the sanctioning of building that dumb, big-ass wall. Shit! Shit! Shit!

Of course, the far right outrage of the lad on the right here should be accompanied by a photo of all the weenies in Congress who haven't the cojones to stand up to him. I am thankful that my guys in the Vermont delegation aren't among them, but what's with this nonsense, anyway? Remember the election? Have they checked Ostrich-Balls' approval ratings lately? Do they really think that our further fuck-ups in Iraq will protect our strategic interests in the region? Fat chance! All of my Progressive party buddies are wildly self-satisfied with the cowardace, the spinelessness of the Democratic Party. I'm thinking of sending a sympathy card to Nancy Pelosi, who had such hopes and dreams, but sure as hell not to Henry Reid.

Enough! Next post I will praise a couple of people and things worth celebrating.

But not today.