here we go again. but maybe better this time

Miz Susan and I were well on our way to charting new territory in the world of New Year's Eve pathetic last night.  Eyelids were fluttering at about 9:15 and I thought sure we'd be welcoming 2013 the next morning, alert and well rested.  With no  Downton Abbey episodes left to watch (which hadn't already been watched during the previous week's D.A. marathons) and not realizing that we were missing out on The Apartment on TCM, it was starting to look like an early evening.  However, Miz Susan rallied heroically for the last few scenes of Lemmon and MacLaine and then a grudging hour of the original Ocean's Eleven.  At the stroke of 12:01 AM, 1/1/13, a verdict of "lame" was pronounced on Sinatra et al and it was lights out.  Our honor as party animals was somewhat preserved though I doubt that anyone's fooled.  I'll have to remember The Apartment for next year.  Maybe we can do better.

I'd like to do better on a lot of things in the coming year but I know one thing for sure.  I'd like to be a little more charitable to John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and the rest of their Congressional Republican cronies.  Even Eric Kantor and Michele Bachmann.  Ouuchh!  Jeez, that hurt.  Thank heavens that I don't have to lump Paul Ryan and Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock and Chip Cravack into that charity basket.

Yeah, I'll try to be charitable despite having to see nightly video of Boehner striding purposefully through the halls of the Capitol.  And having to listen to crap from McConnell such as, "Why are we stuck now doing all this backing away from the fiscal cliff thing when we should have been doing it months ago?"  You moron, you're having to do it now because months ago (and right up until about 10 PM Eastern Time on November 6th) you and your dimwit Republican cronies were hunkered down playing keep away from the American electorate and plotting your delusional revenge after you'd swept the usurper from office.  You believed that shit right up until early in the evening of Election Day and, from all appearances, you still don't look to have anything in the way of a better plan.

I'm not saying that it hasn't been effective in keeping that damn Obamma and his ACORN-bought-and-paid-for do-gooders from implementing the policies that he was elected to implement.  The GOP and the Tea Party got away with the rope-a-dope from 2009 through 2010, came out swinging and scored big in mid-term November (which probably had more to do with the normal flow of American politics than the validity of their message).  Then they lied and they nudged and winked and they insinuated that Barack Obama was a bum and a fake that he was going to go away in 2012.  They'd tapped the deep pockets of the ultra-conservative corporate big money machine to fuel their gains in 2010 and they used those gains as collateral to tap those deep pockets again in 2012.  With significantly less success.  But they don't seem to have come up with any better ideas for 2014.  The scary thing is that they might get away with it, midterm elections being what they are..

I'll admit to feeling a little sorry for the Tea Partiers and GOPers.  Having put themselves deep into hock to the ultra-con loan sharks, I can imagine that they're scared to the point of wetting their pants worrying that the loan sharks are going to be sending out the muscle to collect on those debts.  I'd be scared too if I'd misspent the big boys' half a bill so blatantly.  I suppose that these talentless Congressional shills are worried that they're either going to get visited by the muscle or that their corporate masters are going to actually make good on the longtime blowhard promises to up and leave the country for climes more receptive to big money and its excesses.  Where exactly that is, I'm not sure; China or Roossia maybe.  But the gravy boat might be close to empty for the toadies and lickspittles and they might actually have to move back to their districts or embrace the totally foreign concept of governing.  Bleak prospects for a bunch of otherwise unemployable slackers.

I've gone back and reread all of this and it occurs to me that I haven't been much more charitable to Boehner McConnell, Inc. than I have been in the past.  Ok, I'll try to do better.  Thing is, I'm pretty sure that those two have no intentions whatsoever of doing any better themselves.  Is this a great country or what?

Happy New Year to all.  On to 2014!!