2010—Please, Please PLEASE be better than 2009

Go ahead 2010, put me out of business, I dare you. What would I do if I didn't have anything to complain about? Lordy, I might have to learn how to be happy. I'd have to change my heading to a face with an inane smile and the words "Isn't it a perfect world?"
Gag.
Fortunately, if the last weeks of 2009 are any indication, it will be quite a while before I have to face that lugubrious decision.
Evidence:
Republicans. 'Nuff said.

The Republicans haven't run out of negative energy. They are sort of a political anti-matter. Physicists theorize that shortly after the Big Bang which started this whole mess we live in, and we're talking nano-seconds here, matter and anti-matter particles started interacting and blowing each other up—sort of like Sunnis and Shiites, or Protestant Irish and Catholic Irish back in the day (not so long ago)—and that fortunately (or not, depending on your attitude) there was just enough more matter particles so that something survived to become galaxies and planets and the earth and Big Macs and Penthouse girls' breast implants.

So in Washington someone, the President, or even feckless Democrats, proposes something which might actually be useful to the country and its citizens, and the Republicans stand up and say "No!" and many of the useful things get blown up. But some things survive, like the almost totally eviscerated health reform bill. But it is there, and given the hysteria and fear-mongering of the past year that is a victory. The victor is stumbling along with one leg, one arm, one eye, but is still moving.

Tom Ridge and others have come out and fulminated against the "underwear" terrorist (isn't that the ultimate put-down—not only to fail at blowing up yourself and the plane you are on, but to be known for where you stored the explosives?) being tried in federal court. They think he should be tortured for any other information he has.
First, he has been singing like Wagnerian soprano to the authorities about where he got his stuff and who put him up to it. Second, if you follow news reports about this guy you can see that he is a confused and malleable individual who would not be trusted with any important information by any sane terrorist leader (if "sane terrorist leader" is not a tautology.) As far as information goes, where this guy is concerned, there isn't any there there, as Gertrude Stein once said about Oakland.

But what else to expect from the Repubes? Senator DeMint of South Carolina (where else—like I said before somewhere, for the curmudgeon, South Carolina is the gift that just keeps on giving) is blocking the nomination of a Transportation Security chief because he may be favorable to airport luggage handlers unionizing. God forbid airport employees being happy with their work—and maybe being more concerned and alert to security breaches. Preventing unionization is a more important issue for Demint than having a leader for an important security agency.
Go figure.

Then there is CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Committee which is holding a convention partly sponsored by—wait for it—the John Birch Society.
Younger readers may not know this, but the Birchers were the original wingnut radical right organization. Rachel Maddow had great fun last week countering their complaints that she was misreporting their past statements and positions. For the record, they decided that everyone in power in America back in the 50's and 60's was a Communist. We're talking ab0ut President Eisenhower here—he was a Commie, according to Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society and a major flake. Fluoride in water was a Communist mind-control plot, etc. Having these asshats co-sponsor what is going to be a major conservative/Republican event has got to be the nadir of conservatism in America. Will any person of intelligence ever arise to rescue conservative thought from the crazies?
Back in the sixties I thought that presidential candidate Barry Goldwater (google him if you don't know who he is) was a dangerous wacko. He is sane compared to the Republicans of today.

And finally there is Dick "the mouth" Cheney. Not happy that he is being dissed for the things he did as Presi—oops, I mean, as vice-president, he is seemingly everywhere these days complaining about what the current administration is doing. Even when it is doing the same things he did.
Man. I wish he'd stayed in that undisclosed location he used to haunt when he was VP. Couldn't someone have barred the door?

So, in conclusion, I look forward to a cheerful year of complaint and bewailing of the state of the world.
Life is good.