Politics and Bike Racing

I've got a draft of some interesting content coming, just have to find the time to stare at the journal article I'm using without it making my eyes hurt first, and before I even think about that I have to put in some serious astrophysics hours--which I'm not at the moment doing, because I'm watching the Tour De France solely for the eye candy.  Well, not solely, because bike shorts and jerseys, yellow or otherwise, are not that attractive...but damn those bikes are sexy.  I lust to own a sexy road bike like that:  sleek, light, pretty colors, made of frikkin carbon fiber or titanium...
Young (my age! my age!) Mr. Schleck is quite the eye candy too.  And that Luxembourger accent!  Hey, if men can flip through magazines full of half-naked and unnaturally proportioned women, I can watch sporting events (don't even get me started on tennis) in appreciation of the male participants.

But enough of that.   Since I got stung by a mere yellow jacket while running last night and am now flooded with histamine with the all-over-hives to prove it (though I'll leave the anaphylaxis, thank you very much) and don't want to my contemplate the inevitable eppi-pen-bearing part of my running future, I think I feel entitled to do some bitchin'.

So here it goes:

Yo Democrats:  Stop with the low-blow appeal-to-family whining about the unemployment benefits.   If I hear a self-righteous "The Republicans are turning their backs on american families!" (usually the Republican line, that one) one more time, I'm gonna...I dunno.  Turn le Tour up louder.

Yo Republicans:  Endure the stupidity of your comrades and help 'em figure out where to cut the budget, stop being contrary for the hell of it.  And by the way, what the heck are you hoping to gain by frikkin apologizing to BP for making 'em shell out the big bucks for screwing up?  That's why we have environmental regulation.  So when environmental disasters happen the taxpayers don't have to foot all of the bill.  So that, you know, the deficit doesn't grow and we can consider things like unemployment benefits.  In Big Boy world, individual actions have consequences that might have to be repaired, and hey, now corporations are individuals.   Oh, I forget, you occupy a dream world whereby the environment is capable of magically fixing itself or just isn't really bothered by things like tar balls to begin with.  Dilution is the solution!

Yo Democrats and Republicans:  The Republicans are not trying to destroy American working families, they are legitimately concerned about keeping our debt issues not on the scale of those in Greece.   The Democrats are not trying to turn us into a socialist utopia per se, they just think that in a recession extra govn't spending can keep people's desperation from spiraling so far out of control that we can't get out of said recession and thus fix our deficit problems with the help of actual economic growth. The job-creating kind, for once.

You have a difference of opinion.  Well, no shit.  But all this posturing and turning to your consitituency to make useless statements like "Republicans hate families" and "well the Democrats just won't listen to us so waah" is insulting our intelligence on what the actual difference of opinion is, which isn't families verses not, fixing defecit spending verses not, but a question of how to prioritize both.  Why not listen, instead of talking at each other?

Finally, Yo Blago'vitch:  I don't know which one is worse, you prending that you're an out-of-touch, captivated-by-your-own publicity fool who honestly doesnt' think that what you did was wrong, or you actually being an out-of-touch fool who honestly doesn't think that what you did was wrong.