The future of women and our country, as seen from the floor of the RNC.

So, the Republican National Convention is over. And since describing us as “concerned” over officially adopted Republican policy towards women’s rights issues is like saying Jon Stewart is “approving” of Clint Eastwood’s Obamachair speech, we thought we’d reflect.

We’re still a bit bewildered, frankly. So let’s cut the intro and get straight to the crazy.

1. A Whole Other Level Of Peanut Gallery

An attendee at the Republican National Convention in Tampa on Tuesday allegedly threw nuts at a black camera woman working for CNN and said ‘This is how we feed animals.’

– Kyle Leighton, TPM

(And then he was thrown out – because that’s how the world deals with animals.)

2. Shucks, Don’t You Worry Now

Ann Romney was comparing the entire nation to a high school girl being escorted home from a dance. That was her pitch: I love him, you should, too. Don’t worry your pretty little heads about the details.

– David Corn, Mother Jones

3. Facts Don’t Tell The Whole Story

Rae Lynne Chornenky, the president of the National Federation of Republican Women, addressed the convention on Monday, repeated the oft-discredited claim that 92 percent of all the jobs lost under Mr. Obama were those of women.

– Susan Saulny, New York Times

Here’s FactCheck.org on that very issue.

4. If I Might Address The Chair…?

Mr. Eastwood’s rambling and off-color appearance just moments before the biggest speech of Mr. Romney’s life instantly became a Twitter and cable-news sensation, which drowned out much of the usual post-convention analysis that his campaign had hoped to bask in.

It also startled and unsettled Mr. Romney’s top advisers and prompted a blame game among them. ‘Not me,’ an exasperated-looking senior adviser said when asked who was responsible for Mr. Eastwood’s speech. In interviews, aides called the speech ‘strange’ and ‘weird.’ One described it as ‘theater of the absurd.’

– Michae Barbaro & Michael D. Shear, New York Times

Back where we work at The Daily Show on the West Side of Hell’s Kitchen in New York City, you don’t have to go far to see an old man yelling at an inanimate object. But rarely is that inanimate object on stage at a national political convention. And almost never is that old man…Oscar winner Clint Eastwood.

– John Stewart, The Daily Show

And the show goes on: everyone give a warm welcome to Eastwooding and Invisible Obama. (As for POTUS, he said he remains a “huge fan“).

5. Climate Change? What Climate Change?

Thanks go to Grist for summing things up.

6. Pants On Fire

On the other hand, to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was  Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.

– Sally Kohn, Fox News

7. Failing To Address The Elephant In The Room

Yes, we’re talking about him.

Image: Gage Skidmore

The post 7 WTF-Wonders of the 2012 Republican National Convention appeared first on EcoSalon.

A place where everything is something.

Potential-president Romney’s onto something, and it’s not just his embrace of the “corporate personhood” concept championed and re-championed by the U.S. Supreme Court. If a corporation can be a person, like Romney says, then so can a host of other non-people people, too.

Weather. How many times do you hear some knuckle-headed weather people say, “This weather stinks,” or, “I hate the rain?” It’s pure discrimination frankly. Who decided that Old Man Winter was bad and that Aestas, Goddess of Summer, was good? It sounds a lot like the guys who’ve determined that Mexicans are bad and Anglos are good. And we can’t stand for that, can we? We need anti-discrimination-in-meteorology legislation, ASAP.

Fire. You know what the height of injustice is? The ongoing persecution of arsonists. We all know that it’s the fire that actually burns down the building, not the mere pawn who ignited it. If someone as mainstream as Ron Howard can understand this (and then make a B/B-minus movie about it), then we have to accept it. It’s simple logic, really: we blame the corporation for redistributing wealth from poorer to richer, not the fat cats who run the corporation! When a corporation implodes, you don’t punish the man at the helm; you give him a bonus and thank him for a great year. When you catch an arsonist, you give him a cup of cocoa and a warm blanket; the hero just survived a fire attack!

Traffic. There are all kinds of traffic these days – foot traffic, web traffic, drug traffic – and we should see this diversity as a sign of traffic’s inherent humanity. Imagine the accountability you’d inject into state departments of transportation if you were able to sue traffic for making you late and torpedoing your productivity. You’d see a flood of funding into public transportation, just so that the state could avoid costly lawsuits! Corporate personhood allows one to sue a corporation; gridlock personhood lets you take it to the streets.

Electronics. This personalization serves as a kind of amnesty for slow-running computers, pixilated cable boxes, and skipping portable audio players. Sure, it feels nice to throw a malfunctioning printer out the window, but isn’t that being a little harsh on a single, insignificant particle that constitutes but one tiny fragment of the electromagnetic web that encompasses us all? Just as it’s not your fault when your laptop runs a little raggedly after you’ve dropped it on the floor, it’s also not the laptop’s fault that it’s beholden to a unwieldy technological entity – i.e., electronics – that can’t evolve to the point where being dropped on the floor has no deleterious effects on functionality at all. After all, many animals can survive being dropped on the floor; it’s about time our technology caught up.

War. With gods like Ares, Woden, and Huitzilopochtli, the ancients were on the right track here. I mean, these days, what are those damn peace-niks actually protesting? A fusillade of bullets? The chemical commingling of sulfur, charcoal, and saltpetre? How could any chemistry buff hope to get behind a movement that disdains a classic oxidation-reduction chemical reaction? Redox makes the world go round! We definitely need a lightning rod here. But for our purposes, instead of having a war god, it’s much more practical to invest in a war person. We were close before; perhaps No. 43 is worth trotting out for a second encore?

Foods. We already do this with liquor and ice cream. “Jose Cuervo really kicked my ass last night,” you say; or “I have a date with Ben & Jerry tonight.” Foodies love to talk about the “character” of cheese, or wine, or coffee, but what if they were characters in and of themselves? Imagine the spate of excuses that would open up: “I can’t go to your three-hour a capella jam; I already made plans with [Monterrey] Jack.” Or: “I’d love to watch the Pawn Stars marathon with you, baby, but my Boy[Ardee] friend is coming over.” Sure, sharper minds may call you a cannibal, but, then, they’ve probably never spent a solid night drinkin’ and gamblin’ with the Man in Black himself, Cash[ew nuts].

Image: Mittromneys

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