Naïve citizens might have thought a significant issue of this nature affecting the retirement incomes of just about everyone would have been discussed extensively here in Canada beforehand – perhaps even debated in our antiquated parliament! But fuck that noise, apparently. Harper just couldn’t wait to debut his super-secret plan to gut pensions (in mysterious, as yet undisclosed ways) while self-righteously scolding spendthrift world leaders at an elite Swiss resort.

Despite all evidence, these folks simply refuse to accept the fact that Dr. Paul will NOT be the Republican nominee for president. To the contrary, they act as if by chanting their mantras loud and long enough, or spamming every damn blog and YouTube video on the Internet with asinine comments… somehow, it will alter reality.

Of course, it won’t do any such thing. At the end of the day, Ron Paul will attract less than 10% of the vote in most contested primaries and while he may have the resources to collect an appreciable number of delegates along the way to the convention… so what? It’s not as if he will have the ability to impact the Republicans’ platform in any significant way – the base of the party has sounded rejected both his isolationist foreign policy proposals and his libertarian approach to controversial domestic issues such as the legalization of drugs. Even most government-hating Republicans realize that his vow to immediately cut federal spending by $1 trillion is an absurd notion that would result in total chaos and economic calamity.

It’s actually not surprising in the least that Newt would so readily embrace the term given his attachment to the notion of “American exceptionalism” – a view that holds the United States in an entirely unique position amongst nations of the world for various reasons that are mostly bullshit.

Fun Fact: Joseph Stalin was the first person to employ the term “American exceptionalism” when he castigated the American Communist Party for its deviance from Marxist theory. Go figure.

When President John Kennedy engaged the American nation in the “space race” it was not only an aspirational challenge and morale booster at the high-water mark of the Cold War, but also a bold initiative that had the practical effect of helping advance scientific research across the board with resulting deliverables in the realm of new technology developments. By contrast, Newt Gringrich’s ridiculous vow to colonize the Moon by the end of his second term in office (talk about hubris) is nothing more than pandering to a fringe constituency of lunatics in the state of Florida.

I used to just laugh whenever conservatives derisively mocked environmentalists for being a quasi-religious movement, but perhaps in some respects they were on to something…

Seeing reasonable skeptics such as Bjørn Lomborg ostracized and treated as veritable heretics (aka “deniers”) lends significant credence to the argument that environmental fanatics aren’t essentially that much different in mindset from the hierarchy of the medieval Catholic church.

Romney is now claiming to be “someone who says what he means and means what he says”… this coming from an empty suit whose positions on any given issue are more changeable than the weather.

Aside from that, Romney really has to stop LYING about the economy.

When it becomes available I’ll post the video here, but in the meantime, I thought it might be amusing to see the “response” (in truth, a canned “prebuttal” despite the blatantly false mislabelling of the video) uploaded by Lynn Jenkins, a Republican Congresswoman from the 2nd District of Kansas… who eerily resembles the Amy Sedaris character Geraldine Antonia “Jerri” Blank on Strangers with Candy.

Is it any wonder that Obama can’t get anything done when forced to deal with an elected majority of inane, mendacious fuckwits like this?

Update: Complete “enhanced” version of the SOTU.

For some bizarre reason, CNN won’t allow your presumably delicate sensibilities to be offended by the pic (better they suppose you should just vividly imagine it), so here it is:

Far be it for me to draw any connection whatsoever between this incident and the incessant stream of vile, hateful rhetoric that’s been directed towards “liberals” day in and day out for the past 30 years via right-wing media, let alone suggest that the seminal paper Language: A Key Mechanism of Control, penned by none other than Newt Gringrich, may have anything at all to do with it.

In complete fairness, we don’t actually know who committed this crime. Conceivably, it may be a (typically depraved) “liberal” seeking to tarnish the esteemed reputation of right-wing political activists… you know, just like the ones that are immediately determined to be “plants” of the nefarious Left whenever some especially crazed right-wing lunatic goes haywire at a rally or says/does anything utterly reprehensible.

Whatever else his faults, when confronted with a similar situation back in 2008, John McCain at least had the essential decency to school some of his more fearful, addlebrained supporters.

That was probably the most heated exchange of the evening – a pointless quibble over what constitutes “lobbying” on behalf of government sponsored entities… Zzzzz. There was almost no discussion about jobs, the economy, or the fate of entitlement programs like Social Security.