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Well, I should have made this decision weeks ago.  Actually, it isn’t so much a decision as a vow, which is also the wrong word because I never keep those, or resolutions.  Maybe it’s a promise?  No, no, I don’t want to stick my neck out that far.

A Rainy Day at Malostranska Naměsti, by British artist Robert Crisp

Let’s call it a statement of intent.

American politics has gotten just plain boring lately, with Crazy Eyes Bachmann and her faithful sidekick, Marcus the Prancing Pony, out of the race.  No more Herman Cain jokes.  Newt is an ex-Newt.  We don’t have Rick Santorum to kick around any more.  Perry’s gone back to Texas and Ron Paul has been rendered irrelevant.

The situation has been rendered unamusing.  It may become exciting again, closer to November, in the sense that a football game is exciting, but I hate the fact that we even have to relate to politics on that level.  If Romney wins, it will be a disaster for America and, by extension, the entire world and I don’t think I am even slightly exaggerating.  It is not a fucking game.

So,  anyway, my resolution is that, unless there’s something amazing happening in the news, I’m going to start writing more about regular, every day stuff.  Like my teaching, or my family, or stuff happening in Prague, or my poetry, even though every time I throw my poetry up on the blog, page hits drop like a rock.

I know not a lot of people like poetry and, actually, I get that.  It’s cool.  What I don’t understand, though, is how do people know in advance?  What is it that lets you know, “There is poetry on that site, don’t click over there today?”

It’s like when you’re out walking on a really sunny day and suddenly the sky bursts open and the rain comes pouring down, and you’re standing under an awning that comes out maybe 5 centimeters over the sidewalk, in a doorway with two smokers and a fat lady, looking out at the street scene and all the people with their umbrellas, and you’re thinking “Who the hell are these people and how did they know?”

I’ll still be writing every day because this is my writing practice.  I hope you all keep reading.

I am of the opinion (but touching wood as I say it) that Obama’s got this in the bag.  Oh, sure Citizen’s United opened the floodgates and you’re going to see a massive negative ad campaign, but I don’t think it will move the needle much.  Republicans have loads of money to make ads, but they generally make really bad ones.

If they want to try and paint Obama as an elitist…

But the real reason the O man is going to make it look like a cakewalk is that Mitt Romney, like all the other Republican candidates, peaked too early.  His party’s convention is still a couple of months away, but he’s got a lock on the nomination.  The scrutiny has begun.

Sure, this brings up lots of dirt on Romney, like the bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands, the John Laubner incident, specific dirty deeds at Bain Capital and much, much more, but that’s not all it does.  Actually, Romney is probably glad to get all of this dirt out of the way early.  Not only does it pre-empt an October surprise, it practically inoculates him against one.  (Oh, he fucked a goat?  Well, I’m not surprised.)

The main thing it does, the great thing for Obama, is it establishes the rules early.  Mitt can’t say one day that he’s going to revisit the Reverend Wright controversy and then the next day say that he can’t be held responsible for his supporters views.

Which is it?

He claims that he’s not a birther, but he’s standing right up there on stage with Donald the Huge, King of the Birthers.

Which is it?

Now, all eyes are on Barry and Mitt, and the rules are being established.  If religion is a fair subject, we can make all sorts of fun of Mitten’s magic underwear, his post-mortem baptisms and all that other weird Mormon stuff.

If things that happened as kids are a fair subject, Mitt will seriously lose.  He was basically the Draco Malfoy of his prep school.

If, contrary to his weaselly Republican nature, Romney feels compelled to actually talk about issues like health care, the economy, jobs, whatever…then Obama will crush him.

Well, one story I haven’t been paying enough attention to in the last month is this whole Vatican Leaks foofaraw, hoo boy!  Money laundering, sweetheart contracts, fat cat donors buying an audience with the pope, all sorts of sleazy financial dealings, backstabbings and other office politics.

The CEO

So far, one guy’s been fired and one is under arrest, but they are probably the whistle blowers.  The butler got caught with the papers in his apartment, in the Vatican, so he’s in jail, and the head of the Vatican Bank (Holy Shit, the Vatican has its own bank!) got fired, “erratic behavior” they said, but the way I see it, they figured out that the bank dude was passing the papers to the butler who was passing them to the press, meaning his most holy holiness of holies, former Nazi Joseph Ratzinger, hopes to keep those two quiet and carry on with his merry little crime network.

Oh, for the good old days, when the only problem with the Catholic church was so many priests buggering little boys.

Huffington Post has a terrible habit of writing misleading headlines.  When they wrote “Miley Cyrus Wears See Through Skirt” you better believe I clicked through to look, but it was only see through below the knees.  When they write Sports/Music/Film Legend Dies, I always click through to see just how much the world has been lessened, and the answer is generally “not much.”  No disrespect intended but, as often as not, it’s somebody I’d never heard of.

Still, as misleading as Huffpo is, that’s how gullible I am, so it’s somewhat of a symbiosis.  When I saw the headline today, “Commander and Chief,” over a big grinning picture of the Big O, I suspected some story about a recent political or diplomatic victory.  I was not too flabbergasted by them saying Commander and Chief instead of commander in chief.  They’re not always perfect spellers, either, but that’s not what ticked me off.

When I clicked through to read the article, it was more about that anti-Obama book that’s out now, and selling quite well, I hear.

Particularly the part about Obama smoking pot when he was a young man.  Now, first of all, shame on Huffpo for making this a headline story.  It’s a story, sure, if you’re going to be devoting a whole slideshow to Miley Cyrus’ very normal wardrobe, then I guess that Barry smoking the  good herb is a story.  But not a headline story.  First, it’s old news, because he already wrote about it in his own book.  Secondly, it was never really a scandal in the first place.  Lots of people have smoked pot.

So, I wrote in and called bullshit on the headline switcheroo, and somebody answered my complaint by saying “Didn’t you get it?  Chief is slang for marijuana.”

Well, I’ve been smoking reefer for about 4 decades now.  I’ve called it pot, reefer, herb, dope, wacky backy, ganja, grass, sensie (not sure of the spelling on that one, short for sinsemilla), pako andlolo, skunk, chronic and plain old smoke.  But I don’t recall ever calling it chief.

Cannibear

I suspect some headline writer was looking for a cheap pun, went to Urban Dictionary, found a couple of pages worth of words that somebody, somewhere once said were slang for marijuana, and chose the one that could be a presidential pun.

Or maybe they were just wasted.  Nothing wrong with that.

It’s been a week like most other weeks, some bad classes, some good classes.  A couple of cancellations and one class at a school where I teach a group of 8th  graders for one hour a week and Wednesday was a makeup class because last week they were in England, which sort of puts my one hour a week English lessons to shame, and not a single student showed up.

(this is not my son’s class. It’s just a random photo from a Czech Nature School that I found on Google images)

The kids at the elementary school where I teach most of the time are getting restless, they know the end of the school year is approaching, this month about 1/3rd of the students at any given time have been at “Nature School,” or, to be more literal with the translation, “School in Nature,” the days are hot, today there was Italian music coming up from a little wine, sausage and cheese fair they were having in the park opposite (they have farmers markets there all the time and its not unusual for some kind of  music to disrupt the class), and there was a general disinclination on the part of my students to study, which is also not unusual.

Add to that the fact that, since so many students are at Nature School (which is a really brilliant thing, by the way.  The students go off to camp with their teachers for a week, they have a few classes, take a few side trips, but mostly just fart around with their friends.  The kids love it and the parents get a mini-vacation.), some of my classes were scrunched together.  My first class in the morning I had 5th, 6th and 7th graders all together.

As the kids are disinclined to work hard, so am I.  I broke out the dice and the flashcards, started a quick game, and let it go.   I still shouted at them a bit, I’m afraid, but it could have been much worse.

Jim Conte, a Long Island Iced Tea Bagger, is a member of the New York State Assembly.  (note to Europeans and other non-Americans reading this – the number of Americans holding elective political office is staggering.  In addition to all of the blithering idiots in Washington, every one of the 50 states has it’s own little mini-circus going on, and then there are town councils, zoning commissions, school boards and crap like that.  So, the odds are approaching inevitable that, in any given week, one of them somewhere will do or say something incredibly stupid, just because of the numbers.   It’s also true that a significant number of Americans are dumber than hammers,  but that’s not the only reason our politics suck).

James Conte

Jim Conte thinks bullying is a terrible thing, and I agree with him up to that point.

But  Jim Conte thinks the solution to the problem is to make everybody sign their internet posts with their real name, and of course provide their real address, IP number and phone number to their provider.

Not only is it blatantly unconstitutional, it’s also seriously unworkable and contrary to the basic personality of the internet which the government didn’t invent.  Well, I guess, actually, they did, but we’re beyond that point now.  The internet is used all around the world, in more languages than most people even knew existed.  Sure, countries like China and Iran ban a lot of sites, but the internet moves on, finding ways around that.

It’s all about anonymity and being able to say whatever you want, even some pretty offensive stuff.

Anyway, I don’t see anybody being helped by this proposed law, except for those people who don’t mind putting their real names up with their posts.  Pillars of the community such as Hugh G.  Rection, Heywood Giablomi, Ben and Eileen Dover, Rae Jean Cox, E. Tobago Dix, Anita Biggun, Harry Balz, Peter Burns, Mike Hawk, Mike Hunt, Amanda Hugandkiss, long time partners Ben Doon and Phil McCracken and our old friends from grade school Seymour Butts,  I.P. Freely and A.B. Normal.

Reality challenged Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, who has been raising a terrible stink the past couple of weeks over the old “Obama’s Birth Certificate” thing and saying he wanted to keep Obama off the ballot in November, which would be humorous except for that part about him being  Secretary of State for Arizona, which means he maybe could have done it.

If Ken Bennett is offended that I think he’s a lying little pander-monkey, I apologize

Anyway, he has apparently been convinced that he was barking up the wrong tree (If Donald Trump and Dentist/Lawyer/Real Estate agent Orly Taitz combined couldn’t come up with the goods, what chance did Mr. Bennett have?)

So, he’s issued the standard Republican apology (yeah, both sides do it, but in case anybody is keeping score, the Republicans lead in this category by about 1,000 to 1).

“If I embarrassed the state, I apologize, but that certainly wasn’t my intent,” he said.

Actually, Mr. Bennett, nobody’s asking you to apologize for embarrassing the State of Arizona.  You’re from the same state as Jan Brewer, Sheriff Joe R. Piehole and Meghan McCain.  Seriously, how much more embarrassed could Arizona be?

You should apologize for wasting everybody’s time on an issue that is more proven than global warming, even.  Obama’s bona fide Americanness has been proved as much as evolution or the more or less roundness of the earth.  It is not a matter of opinion.  It is settled fact.  You should apologize for being a bloody idiot.

But my real problem with this is the wording of the apology.  “If I embarrassed the State…”  Apologies that begin with “if” don’t count.

It’s like  Romney’s statement in regard to the John Lauber haircut incident.  “If anybody was offended by any  of my funny little pranks in High School, well, here, have an apology, on me” har har har.

It’s just not good enough.