it's the end of the day, right?

i've been listening to pandora pretty much all afternoon at work. the station is filled with artists like adele, kate nash, regina spektor, lily allen and the like. in the past 20 minutes, every song has been a cover. this leads me to think that based on my limited karaoke abilities, i could probably succeed at being a singer. i mean, actual talent is a very small part of what gives someone the ability to be a musical sensation (see britney spears, katy perry and ashlee simpson for examples.) no, instead what you need is a loyal gay following and something that gets them to spend their money. for britney, it used to be her sexy, glam appeal followed by her bitch has gone crazy stint followed by the recovery or whatever that was. she keeps it interesting and no matter how bad she gets, people stay loyal to that. good for her. i probably wouldn't be the kind that dances around the stage with crazy, wild sets, just a little dancing, probably some pretty back up folks who can sing and dance and play instruments since i don't play an instrument and i don't want you to listen too close. yes, that's how i would do it. and i would be a flash-in-the-pan sensation. ten years from the peak of my success, a single will play on a soft rock radio station at 2:30am and people will think, "whatever happened to her? i remember liking this song that time." ah to dream. the silly nonsense in my mind keeps me quite amused.

aside from daydreaming, a bad thing has happened to/in america. standard and poors has dropped our credit rating from AAA to AA. now, i have no idea who frank conniff is but huffington post created a collection of the best tweets about our credit rating dropping and i felt i would share: "standard & poor downgraded economy from "train wreck" to "shit storm." once markets open it could drop to "clusterfuck." (for the other 23 best tweets go here: funniest economic downgrade tweets so far) i'm not going to lie about it, i was pretty worn out by all the media coverage the debt ceiling nonsense got over the past few weeks. it was a circus without a ringleader. chaos everywhere. at the last minute, they caved and made a deal, like i knew they would. it's exactly what they did with the budget earlier this year. here's the thing, i am so tired of listening to people talk about how congress is useless. does it seem like an awful lot of messing around with not a lot of output? definitely. but i think that paul krugman of the new york times got it right in his editorial today when he said: "No, what makes America look unreliable isn't buget math, it's politics. And please, let's not have the usual declarations that both sides are at fault. Our problems are almost entirely one-sided --specifically, they're caused by the rise of an extremist right that is prepared to create repeated crises rather than give an inch on its demands." congress, and their productivity, has been stopped in its already slow moving tracks by a bunch of right wing wackos that have only one agenda in mind: make sure obama doesn't get re-elected. this mentality of doing whatever is necessary to make the president look bad is what is messing up our nation, downgrading our credit rating and creating even more uncertain for a country that needs some serious bi-partisan work to rebuild our economy and get people back to work. i'm just sayin.

instead, we get people like michelle bachmann running for president. i find her to be nearly, if not entirely, intolerable as a person, as a woman and as an elected official. she is an embarrassment and i'm not entirely convinced that she's not actually insane. some of the statements she makes or the declarations of fact that end up being complete bastardizations of american history...:shudder::. i hope that she goes away quietly, finds that her time is better spent in reality tv. dear people at tlc, i feel like michelle bachmann needs her own show. can you make it happen soon so she doesn't actually get into the presidential race? kthnxbye. i can't imagine that there are actually enough morons in the country for her to make it through the gop primary and even if she does, i don't think there are enough people to put her over the top to beat obama in 2012 but the thought alone scares me. i've always liked being an american but i don't know if i could stay if there was a bachmann white house.

now the point i'm making here, in case it isn't abundantly clear, is that it is the fault of the tea party that our country is getting f-ed in the a. it is our obligation as citizens to realize that and vote accordingly next year. for real people. don't forget or make any other ridiculous excuses, just do it. the tea party's strangle hold on congress was evident even when the gop speaker of the house couldn't get these extreme right wing folks to toe the republican line and that is the gop's greatest strength. their unfailing, blind unity. i'm tired of the protests, the misspelled, ignorant, racist signs, the people presenting nonsense as fact and most importantly, i'm tired of the tea party playing russian roulette with america. please go back to whatever backwater hole you came from and leave the rest of us alone. ok, i'm done preaching now.

from the girl who's birthday tomorrow puts her one step closer to thirty.

until next time...