The conspiracy nuts in this country have really and truly lost it. The birthers were bad enough; the deathers were just a variation on a them. At least they were attacking the president together. I hate it, but at least they were attacking someone in a position of authority. Just recently, though, people in a town hall started heckling and screaming at a woman in a wheelchair. What the hell? Biden was right; the health care debate is out of control.
September 10—I am never visiting South Carolina. Ever.
As if Governor Mark Sanford weren't bad enough, Joe Wilson screamed "You lie!" at Obama during his speech tonight. As the news already pointed out, it wasn't so much the words as it was the rabid look on his face that really bothered everyone else. Heckling the president isn't such a good idea anyway, but geez, could you at least do it without making people wonder where the sane people in your state are? And then of course he apologized with one of those pathetic non-apologies in which he didn't actually admit to any wrongdoing. Which reminds me, Sanford is insisting he won't resign, which means he'll most likely get impeached. I can't wait for that.
Anyway, Obama's speech was great, and though it probably won't do anything for those lunatic fringe types, I think it will serve to unite Democrats. In the meantime, I look forward to watching Wilson self-destruct.
September 17—Stephen Colbert must be so proud of his home state.
Joe Wilson has caught all kinds of flak from his "You lie!" comment, as he deserved. He went on TV and said it was the wrong place and wrong time—i.e., a non-apology apology in the "sorry if I offended anyone" vein. He's sorry he got busted, not sorry for what he did. He's spouting a lot of self-pity and saying he's being targeted by the left. Oh really, no shit? You stand up in Congress and shout epithets at the president with the look of a madman and expect to garner sympathy? What a loser. By the way, this is the same guy who defended the Confederate flag. Nice going.
September 23—No wonder this was his first appearance in forty years.
I tuned into the news excitedly to watch Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi speak. I wasn't sure to expect, but it uh . . . wasn't that. I thought I wasn't concentrating and chastised myself, but nope, it wasn't just me. Everyone else found his rambling incomprehensible as well, which is a damn shame because let's face it, anything the leader of a country that fucked up has to say should probably be listened to carefully.
Qaddafi took seventeen minutes to reach his main point, a demand for an African seat on the Security Council, which made sense . . . until he called it the "terror council." Actually, that does make more sense.
He called for justice for those who caused "mass murder" in Iraq (meaning us, Buffy), suggested the swine flu was a biological weapon, defended the right of the Taliban to establish an Islamic emirate, and demanded a thorough investigation of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I feel like pausing for a drink now.
But it gets better.
He suggested moving UN headquarters to Libya for his own convenience, which was just ridiculous, and then—thoroughly entrenching himself in the realms of fantasy—reiterated his longstanding proposal that Israel and the Palestinian territories be combined into one state called Isratine. Good luck with that one.
Qaddafi also said he didn't recognize the authority of the United Nations charter, which I think went without saying. Despite the barbs stabbed at the US, he did at least praise us for electing a "son of Africa" as president. I suppose he would not have been down with a white guy as our leader.
Vintage Qaddafi, all right.
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September 25—And this is why I will never take a job where I have to go alone to strangers' houses. Census worker Bill Sparkman was found dead, hanging from a tree in a remote patch of Daniel Boone National Forest, with the word "FED" scrawled across his chest in felt tip marker. Annoyingly and tactlessly, I was less shocked at this story when I found out it happened in Kentucky. Of course, the authorities are trying to deny the lunatic fringe had anything to do with it; they claim they haven't determined if it were an accident. . . . In the sense that the late Mr. Sparkman didn't intend to wind up dead, yes; but I doubt very much that the rednecks responsible who ought to be institutionalized hanged him and scrawled unpatriotic epithets across his chest did so unintentionally. The authorities even said they didn't know whether the "fed" part had any bearing on his job. For God's sake, morons, must you insult his memory? along with the intelligence of everyone who hears this story? My sympathies to Mr. Sparkman's family and friends. And a giant "Fuck you" to the idiots responsible, and another "Fuck you" to the arguably even more idiotic people claiming it was an accident.
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