Welcome to Awards Edition Plus, your one-stop snark shop highlighting political asshattery, hypocrisy, and outright insanity. While Bill in Portland Maine takes a well-deserved day off to pluck the grey hairs out of his eyebrows AEP presents this placeholder edition of Cheers and Jeers.
Join us after the divider-doodle for some of the usual suspects: Managing Editor Lenin Cat tells us how we can motivate our college kids and seniors to vote--and vote Democratic--in November in the Awards Edition Plus Editorial, the We Built It Department highlights an entrepreneur with close ties to the commonmass family, the News of Dubious Veracity Department and, of course, an RNC smackdown rundown of Golden Douchenozzle Award nominees.
And now, without further ado, it's...Awards Edition Plus!
Awards Edition Plus Editorial
by Lenin Cat
Last month, NPR carried a story on the prospective youth vote in November's general election. Predictably, enthusiasm is down from 2008 among the increasingly low attention span text-in-class-can't-think-beyond-the-end-of-the-semester-and-politics-is-boring-anyway-OMG-LOL demographic. In fact I have heard a number of stories with interviews about the prospective undergraduate vote and what I've heard is not encouraging. "I'm just not interested in politics, it's really boring", "I don't have time" and "They (politicians) are all the same anyway, why should I vote?" seem to be disturbingly common themes. Now while this may have always been the case with the 18-25 year old set, the sheer vapidity of the youth interviewed in some of these stories is frightening. It has confirmed my hypothesis (and there's plenty of other evidence for this) that a college education has become about learning a narrow set of skills, devoid of intellectual curiosity of any kind, and a mere vehicle to earning a good living while paying off 20 years of crippling debt (unless you can follow Romney's advice borrow money from your parents and place them into crippling debt for 20 years).
Well, for those parents of college-age kids (and kids not attending college but perhaps relying on a little help from the parents or grandparents) I have a simple suggestion that might help get some of the apathy out of the aspiring venture capitalists sitting through Statistics and that "useless" distribution requirement about Sociology or something ("I don't know, I rarely go to that class anyway"): Either vote, or you're not getting any financial help of any kind next Semester. I know it sounds cruel, but sometimes tough love is the best kind. My parents never had to threaten me with that, but then again, I was raised with good civic values. We voted in my family and I managed to both go to college, win two prestigious awards, serve in student government and as an officer of a couple of student societies and still cast an informed vote in every election AND get high a lot. Think about it, parents. Tell them either get to the polls, or borrow next Semester's tuition from Mitt Romney, and be prepared to be thrown off your insurance if Romney and Ryan get their wish.
As for Seniors, I suspect they're more likely to vote, but some of them are getting ready to vote for cat food and vouchers rather than in their own best interests. Well, parents, send your parents a link to this nifty diary which--in very simple terms--explains just what Ryan's "voucher" plan would mean to their Medicare.
There's a lot at stake this November. Let's not screw it up.
--Lenin Cat
News Of Dubious Veracity Department
Via the Mormon Times:
Romney To Pose In Mormon Underwear For Magazine
Salt Lake City. Taking a page from Sen. Scott Brown's playbook, the Romney campaign has confirmed that the candidate will consent to an interview by Cosmopolitan magazine complete with centerfold. Romney is expected to pose for provocative, erotic photos for the magazine in his sacred Mormon undergarments as part of the ongoing effort to appeal to woman voters. A campaign spokeswoman told the Times "I think it will humanize Mitt, plus, when you see him in his Mormon underwear, it does kind of make him look like a superhero"...
"We Built This"--With A Little Help From The Government Department
My great-grandfather, well, one of them, was an immigrant from Central Europe. He built several businesses, but only a couple of them were legitimate. The most lucrative one though, was the bootlegging. But he didn't do it on his own, he had a little help from the government: his business partner the Judge. Take that, GOP.
PRO DEO ET PATRIA--or at least for Hungary and the Hapsburgs: Derenik István (Stephan) does his part for the Crown of St. Stephen in the K. u. K. Infantrie, Kassa, Hungary (today Košice, Slovakia) around the time of the annexation of Bosnia. What he did in the Great War remains mysterious, but it surely involved black market war profiteering. Later, in the United States, he became a model of entrepreneurial capitalism: fur trader, gold speculator, bootlegger and pimp.
And now, a word from our sponsor:
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Without further ado, AEP presents:
The Golden Douchenozzle Award
RNC Edition
The GDN is awarded periodically to politicians and public figures for general asshattery and rank hypocrisy. Today's nominees are:
Todd Akin Achin' for Akin? Well, apparently, some Missouri voters still are. In celebration of the Representative's supreme douchenozzlery, here's a list of Missouri abortion clinics.
Maine GOP Delegates committed to Ron Paul didn't get their way, so they picked up their copies of Atlas Shrugged and leather-bound Conservative Bibles and stormed out in a huff and headed for the Romper Room.
Maine Gov. Paul LePage, a frequent recipient of this award, did his part by boycotting the convention altogether but it didn't keep him away from "Florider": instead, he headed down on a vacation in Florida, presumably at the home where his wife claimed permanent residence status to scam the state into giving their daughter in-state tuition.
Clint Eastwood. All the emptiness of that empty chair and all the Alzheimer's of Charlton Heston.
Chris Christie doesn't have to open his mouth to be self-serving. Of double-helpings. To hear him tell it last week at the convention, we'd better dust off the Taft bathtub...
Condolezza Rice and her shameful distortion of the Obama foreign policy record. And that scowl! Every time I see her, it makes my teeth ache.
Paul Ryan I never knew one person could tell so many bald-face lies all at once. I now understand why he's been running from his self-proclaimed Ayn Rand fanboy image. His real idol is Goebbels.
Mitt Romney He's compassionate--if you're a member of his congregation. Otherwise, not so much.
Ann Romney Momsmomsmomsmoms. Pastapastapastapasta.Tunatunatunatuna. Bullshitbullshitbullshitbullshit.
Who wins the award? You decide in the Poll! Let us know what you're cheering and jeering about in the comments while you're at it. Happy Labor Day!