I had a big angry post for today, but I’m fairly certain everything I want to say has been said by Jon Stewart, or here, here, here, here, here or here.  So I’m not going to rant.  I did it last week.  Here are the only things I’m going to cut and paste, and then we’ll move on to something more…calm.  Mmmkay?

In re: how I felt after Thursday’ RNC: Put some policy out there.  Then tell me how that policy is going to benefit Americans.  Because all I heard was FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR SMUG SMUG SMUG SMUG FEAR FEAR FEAR.  You brought up Al Gore.  Really?  Gore’s so relevant to this election. He’s been so high-profile.  Or not.  If you are dragging out that tiresome shit, you really must be struggling to say anything of substance about your candidate save the fact that DID YOU KNOW HE WAS A POW?  OMG pee myself while waving an American flag with an eagle perched on my shoulder, talons ready to tear through an “Islamofascist” as I draw a cross in the dirt outside my house that I built MAH-SELF with my own god-willing sweat and tears.  So not in touch with reality.  Seriously.

FYI:I declared on Twitter Thursday the IP rights to using MORE FEAR as a parody of NO FEAR in re: GOP.  Such as “You miss 100% of the irrelevant pot shots you don’t take. MORE FEAR” or “Don’t let her complete lack of experience stand in the way of your dreams. MORE FEAR” or “Miss Alaska: Second place is the first in line. MORE FEAR” or “Guantanamo: there’s no such thing as unnecessary roughness. MORE FEAR”.

The thing that prompted me to actually say something instead of watching the internets batter itself was seeing the trailer for the new Harvey Milk biopic.  It got me choked up.  You want to see a fucking real maverick?  Try someone who refused to be treated as an inferior citizen, someone who continued to tirelessly campaign for human rights in the face of death threats that eventually led to his assassination.  Someone who mobilized an entire community.  Someone who changed millions of Americans lives for the better.  Someone whose killer only served five years for a premeditated hate crime that left two elected officials dead.  That’s fucking courage in the face of the establishment.

Then realize that the same bigoted, hateful rhetoric against people still exists 30 years after his death, largely perpetrated by fervent supporters of last night’s ilk, who employ the same rhetoric of hate, of division, of marginalization of “others” to scare people.

Um, yeah, so that’s all I felt like cut-and-pasting.  But, in bigger news, I totally had a dream last night that my dad made friend with Obama and Obama was just chilling in Urbandale and then the Obama family and the Best family went to Minnesota together and Ed and Barack went fishing on a pontoon.  I’m serious.  It was awesome.

Actually, I think this is a great idea.  This should happen.  I’m going to look into making this happen.  It would go down like this:  Ed would show Barack his giant tomato plants and tell Michelle that they’re “organic” and he only fertilizes his tomatoes with horse poop from his friend Butch who has horses.  Then Ed would put Barack to work husking some sweet corn and would tell him that he’s got an in with the sweet corn guys on the corner of Douglas and 86th and if Barack drops his name he can get a bakers dozen, no sweat, and can you believe that picked that shit that day?  Ed Best doesn’t care if you are the future president, you can husk your own sweet corn.

Then my dad would show Barack his lifetime NRA membership and how the guns are safely stored in a safe and would make sure that Barack doesn’t want to pry them from his cold dead hands, which he does not.  Then Ed would show Barack the “Manly Room” in the basement (i.e. my old bedroom taken hostage) complete with full-mounted deer heads and a camo La-Z-Boy and at that point Barack would be nervously eyeing Secret Service but no worries, it’s cool, Ed is a hunter with a heart!  He is PFLAG! He composts!  He wants renewables!  But he would tell Michelle to not get a Roomba, because there’s not enough weight over the beater bar to actually take care of your carpet for reals.

At some point, Ed would try his infamous “I have a kitty!” game he tries to pull with kids using his hands cradled against his chest on Malia and Sasha, and they might play along to be nice because they are classy little ladies but in Malia’s head you know she’s saying “Um, sir, I am ten years old and have been on stage in front of 80,000 people without farting or tripping.  You have no kitty in there.”  Then Sasha would say “Daddy, what city are you in?”  and everyone on Patricia Drive would swoon from her cuteness.  Long story short, the Obama family will have left DMI with some more votes and a roll of carpet that somehow my dad sold them with the promise that he would install it himself.