I had abominable abdominal surgery down in Boston, Ma. Woke up with a half a dozen tubes in me. My first major surgery.

Much to my surprise, after using and testing Microsoft OSs and programs for years, I made the switch from a Windows to a Linux based OS. First to Ubuntu and then, after a bit of distro hopping in between, finally settling on Linux Mint. I’m still surprised.

I had to come to terms with the fact that the surgery I had is not going to help as much as I had hoped, that there’s a good chance I won’t be able to become employed again. Sort of an early forced retirement if you will. Considering what has happened of late, I may be too busy for the next couple of years to maintain a job anyway.

Which brings me to the last bit of personal type major events that have occurred during the past 12 months—we had our home ripped out from underneath us by our so-called friend and, as a result, ended up purchasing our own home (well, almost anyway). Something that neither my wife nor I ever thought was going to happen again.

I won’t say it was “just by happenstance” or just by “pure, shit-blind luck” that we stumbled across this new place the same day we received the news that our current home was being sold as it’s been proven to me one too many times during my life that when disaster hits, an opportunity then presents itself. I also learned to never ask questions in these cases, just go with the flow and shut up.

But the personal type stuff isn’t the only thing that’s made the last 12 months interesting. Events in the old USA have been a regular cornucopia of entertainment now hasn’t it?

We’ve had a new president out there turning the government on it’s ear by, for all intents and purposes, doing his utmost best to do his utmost best. Say what you will but this is the first president that’s ever tried and (somewhat) succeeded in taking care of  the problems that exist right here on the home territory rather than just letting them slide like so many other administrations in the past have done. This guy has accomplished more good in the last 14 months than other past administrations have accomplished in decades. Not bad for someone who walked into an absolute mess the first day on the job.

And this set off a whole chain of events that kept my eyes glued to my computer display since I turned 50 last year. I’ll list some of them below that have really made the last several months so interesting for me.

There are those who have called our president a socialist, communist, fascist, Nazi, etc. Of course, those that do call him that are probably incapable of comprehending what a socialist, communist, fascist, Nazi, etc really is because if they did they’d never call him a socialist, communist, fascist, Nazi, etc in the first place.

I’ve watched the once respectable (if such a thing can be said for any political party) Republican party lose it’s collective mind and reduce itself into the equivalent of a bunch of spoiled adolescents stomping around and screaming their heads off because they didn’t get their way. The entire goal of the Grand Old Party has since been redirected to make sure that President Obama fails at all costs—including the complete failure of our own country if necessary. A sad thing indeed when they could have easily been part of the recovery process rather than defying it at every turn.

Then there’s the so-called “Tea Party”. I’m still not too sure what to make of these folks except that it’s formation pretty much came as a result of the “Fall of the Republican Party” as I like to call it. Okay, so people have a right to their own opinion but like most groups of this type, the intelligence level of the individuals involved is oppositely proportional to the number of people involved in the group itself. I mean, their role model is Sarah Palin? C’mon now.

Spitting on; yelling racial epitaphs at; throwing stones through windows of homes and offices of; mailing letters filled with an “unidentified white powder” to; those that voted for the Health Care Reform bill? Acts of extreme violence towards the government, government officials and law enforcement agencies plotted and planned by good, “right thinking”, Christians? Christians?!? Well, golly gee whiz folks, wouldn’t Jesus would be proud though?

Hoo boy, Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey could never have topped this 3 ring circus no matter how many trained elephants, donkeys and clowns they had.

So it’s been a very interesting year to say the least. Never a dull moment as they say.

Now you might think that all this mish-mash of personal and non-personal upset has me feeling a bit insecure about my (our) well being and you’d be right. However, and this may come as a surprise to a few, it’s not so much the personal events that cause me to feel less than comfortable about things in general than it is the non-personal events that give me a profound sense of unease. I won’t trouble my readers with trying to explain though as this post is getting a bit long in tooth as it is. Some of it should be fairly obvious anyway.

You can take the above statement as you will but suffice it to say that I’m very glad that this new place we’re hoping to buy has new roofs, sills, windows, siding, a wood stove and a river nearby.

And I’m certainly not going to wonder what the next 12 months will bring as there’s enough to occupy my wee brain for the next few months as it is. In that light I think it’s best to stop thinking for now and, if all goes well, start thinking again sometime around mid-summer.

Who knows? The quality of my posts might actually go up if I don’t think about them first?

Now just to be clear on things, I have watched this woman’s antics ever since it was first announced that she had been picked as John McCain’s running mate (Sarah who?). Being a reasonable man I decided to give this lady the benefit of the doubt until she removed all doubt, etc, etc.

Well, she did–remove all doubt that is. I’m sorry but the woman is clueless. Not only is she clueless but she’s dangerous as well in that she’s causing all sorts of things to happen–all the wrong things. But this time it’s personal.

Because of her I had a comment banned from USA Today on that very same article. Why? Because I dared use the word ‘retarded’ in my comment even though earlier comments had also included the word ‘retarded’. Sometime during the first comment that used the word and my comment, USA Today decided to flag the word ‘retarded’ as inappropriate as per their comment policy.

This was one of the first comments on the article:

Retarded is a word that has absolutely nothing to do with those challenged mentally or physically. Do Republicans ever take a break from being upset by anything a Democrat say??

Now this was my second comment that was much later in the stack:

I had to substitute an ‘*’ for the ‘r’ in ‘*etarded’ in my previous comment (as the word refers to the timing of an engine) due to it being flagged as inappropriate by USA Today’s comment policy.

Uh-huh. Better tell all mechanics at my local auto garage not to use that word anymore (despite the fact that there isn’t any other word for it, mind you). Otherwise they might be sued?

My first comment, the one concerning engine timing, seems to have gone missing.

This means, and I’ll say it again, that somewhere between the first comment above and my first comment, USA Today changed their comment policy to include the word ‘retarded’ as inappropriate.

The real problem I see here is that Rahm Emanuel’s use of the word had nothing to do with folks who are mentally or physically impaired (or is it challenged now, I forget). He used it in reference to an idea that came up in some sort of weekly strategy session he had walked into. And he didn’t say the idea was retarded, he said it was F****ing retarded (just to keep things in perspective). To wit:

The friction was laid bare in August when Mr. Emanuel showed up at a weekly strategy session featuring liberal groups and White House aides. Some attendees said they were planning to air ads attacking conservative Democrats who were balking at Mr. Obama’s health-care overhaul.

“F—ing retarded,” Mr. Emanuel scolded the group, according to several participants. He warned them not to alienate lawmakers whose votes would be needed on health care and other top legislative items.

WSJ article

And what makes the whole ridiculous issue even more of a farce is that the Chief of Staff had said this behind closed doors, not in public–and back in August! This means that one or more of the attendees of the weekly strategy session had finally managed to complain to the press about how the Chief of Staff had called their idea “F***ing retarded”.

Nice to know our government employs adults, isn’t it?

Okay, maybe old Rahm could have been a bit more “politic” about his choice of descriptive adjectives but hey, maybe he’d had a bad day or something. Who knows? It happens.

The point is that ol’ Palin just had to jump up on that soapbox she carries around with her (which she stores alongside the chip she keeps on her shoulder) and yell and holler about how it demeans the mentally impaired and blah, blah, blah, etc, etc, etc, when she was the one who made the comparison in the first place.

Well, fine then.

You would think that all her bellyaching wouldn’t have an affect on my personal browsing/commenting experience now would you? I mean, from the very first moment I went online so many years ago through to present I’ve never had a comment flagged as ‘inappropriate’–ever.

I have now though. Thanks, Sarah.

This?

Or this?

About even I figure.