Obama is God (or at least controls the weather), the GOP (flop) sweats Paul Ryan, Texas A&M shooter had mental problems, the Five Fatal Flaws of Paul Ryan, Rick Perry: Closet Liberal, Ryan heckled; world laughs, the making of the Mandarin Mermaid, and Progressive: Evil or Just Amoral?
Welcome to the Daily Sausage.
House Speaker John Boehner’s office released an email and website message on Monday saying that President Obama “continues to blame anyone and everyone for the drought but himself.” Let’s analyze this statement.
House Speaker Boehner is saying that President Obama should be blaming the nationwide drought on himself. That implies that President Obama is somehow capable of controlling the weather, which either makes him some kind of comic book super villain or God. Personally, I’m hoping for super villain. By all accounts, supervillains do a decent enough job running things. I mean, you never hear anyone in Latveria complain about Dr. Doom.
Next up, Politico reports that there are a number of GOP strategists sweating like stuck pigs over the selection of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney’s VP. As they rightly should be. Mitt Romney had a chance at winning a referendum on President Obama. He doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning a choice election between President Obama’s policies and Paul Ryan’s policies.
Huffington Post is reporting that Thomas Caffall, the Texas A&M shooting suspect, had “mental difficulties” according to his parents. And yet, he was able to amass a sizable collection of firearms. Go figure.
Rolling Stone has a rundown on Paul Ryan’s Five Fatal Flaws. Personally, I was surprised they could only pick five.
Texas Governor Rick Perry endorsed a surprisingly liberal position in response to the Texas A&M shootings, in stating that individual states should be able to determine their own policies on firearms. Perry did state that such a policy wasn’t right for Texas, but the principle remained. This places Governor Perry to the left of the NRA, and in line with the Supreme Court’s liberal justices in McDonald v. Chicago, the case that struck down Chicago’s absolute gun ban.
In his first solo event as Mitt Romney’s Vice Presidential nominee, Paul Ryan was ruthlessly heckled at the Iowa State Fair when protesters began asking Ryan “Are you going to cut Medicare?” and imploring him to “stop the war on the poor”, “stop the war on the middle class,” and “stop the war on the common good.”
Romney supporters attempted to drown out the hecklers with chants of “U-S-A!” If there’s a more apropos analogy to the state of our current political debate, I haven’t heard it.
When questioned by reporters, Ryan declined to answer, saying “We can play ‘stump the VP’ later.”
In light of these events, let us not forget Paul Ryan whining after President Obama hurt his fee-fee’s several months ago by brutally destroying his budget. Paul Ryan is thin-skinned with a glass jaw, just like Mitt Romney, who’s already cried uncle. President Obama and Vice President Biden are gonna eat these guys for lunch.
The UK Daily Mail has a new story on the making of the “Mandarin Mermaid”, 16-year old Chinese Gold-medalist swimmer Ye Shiwen.
The Chinese are so desperate to beat America in things like the Olympics they subject citizens to horrific treatment for national glory. Can you imagine the outrage if Michael Phelps was taken from his family at a very young age, forced to train six days a week, 12 plus hours a day, 50 weeks a year? There would be national outrage.
Consumerist has an excellent follow-up on the case.
I’ve been a Progressive customer for a long time. When my car was set on fire, Progressive had someone out there the next day. I had a check within a week. When I got into an accident the day after I got my new car, they worked with me on paying off the premium over time, as I was cash-poor at that moment, and had it back to me good as new in a week.
I took a stand against Chick-Fil-A on the grounds that they were supporting hate through their donations toward anti-gay groups.
When an organization like Progressive acts in an amoral manner, I don’t think it’s right to go after them the same way.
Corporations are profit generating entities. They exist to make money, unless otherwise noted. Moreover, corporations are inherently amoral; they’re guided by the moral code of their shareholders and executives, who are more concerned with profits than morals. Insurance companies are a particularly tricky area, in that if they didn’t fight large claims there’s a decent chance they’d eventually go out of business. Yes, they should be publicly shamed for being douchebags. But, ultimately, they have to be douchebags to survive in the industry they’re in.
