The only politician on the national scene who doesn’t make me barf. “The system is rigged” — you don’t really need to say much more than that.

Why can’t Michelle Obama be President instead of Barack? I would feel so much better about the state of the Union if she were. Also, America deserves, at long last, a President who can wear a beautiful, stylish dress and look smoking-hot in it.

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At the Republican National Convention tonight, Governor Chris Christie said that his mother, a Sicilian, always told him it was more important to be respected than to be loved — which can be translated as “when a hungry person approaches you and stretches out an empty hand, be sure you’re carrying a baseball bat and not a loaf of bread”.

Ann Romney gave one of the best political convention speeches ever tonight. All the commentators, mostly men, missed its quality and power, but it was powerful. The sneering liberals mocked her for claiming to empathize with “ordinary women”, when she was so rich and privileged, but she talked more about the issues that apply to women in all stations of life, especially mothers.

A rich mother doesn’t worry less about her kids than a poor mother does, even though a poor mother may have more to worry about in a practical sense. All mothers worry about their kids — it’s what mothers do. Motherhood, practiced with this sort of intensity, was once celebrated in the culture — now it’s criticized, if it seems too obsessive, or seen as one more role to be fitted into a full and busy life.

In truth, as Los Lobos once sang, “A mother’s love is like a story never told” — at least now in our culture — but Ann Romney spoke as a mother to other mothers, and it was startling. She’s a woman who “has it all” if there ever was one, but she made it clear that having it all isn’t everything. The kids, and by extension the marriage, are everything.

It’s too bad that the convention planners wheeled out an animatronic figure of Mitt Romney to awkwardly embrace Ann after her speech.  Or was that robotic thing actually Mitt himself?  I don’t even want to go there — the thought is too terrible to contemplate.

It was, however, a brilliant idea to have John Candy deliver the keynote address after Ann’s speech.  Many, like myself, who thought that Candy was dead must have been delighted to see him alive and well, robust and animated, and doing such a spot-on impersonation of Winston Churchill as a New Jersey thug.

It will be horrible to wake up on 7 November and know that Mitt Romney, animatronic nonentity, will be the next President of the United States — but that will be balanced by the joy of knowing that Barack Obama, the shabby little coward, the worst President since James Buchanan, has left the political stage forever, that he’ll be collecting his thirty pieces of silver from his Wall Street masters in shame and ignominy . . .

. . . by the bowels of Christ, wake the fuck up!

On the Good Ship Malaprop, Mitt Romney introduced Paul Ryan as “the next President of the United States”. Poor Mitt — he’s just not ready for prime time. Ryan is, though.

Ryan is a snake-oil salesman, and like any good snake-oil salesman he comes across as a regular guy, a guy who just wants to put you onto a good deal.  This is oddly refreshing after the vacuousness of Romney and Obama. They are spokesmodels for corporate America and come off like spokesmodels — hollow and robotic. Obama’s lofty rhetoric, that once reminded you of the rhetoric of a great preacher of the old school, fails to impress anymore, now that we know he’s just blowing smoke up our asses.

Ryan comes across as a human being, a flim-flam man but not a robot or a pasteboard pastor. This will be a two-sided sword for Romney — Ryan may inject some humanity into Romney’s campaign but that humanity will simultaneously make Romney look even more synthetic than he already does.

But Ryan is good. He will wipe the floor with Biden in their debate. He will remind people of Obama’s synthetic persona even as he reminds them of Romney’s synthetic persona.

He has suddenly made the race interesting.

I won’t be eating at Chick-fil-A again, because I don’t want to contribute money to a company that contributes money to organizations that advocate in the political sphere for denying civil right to gays. At the same time I think the CEO of the company, a mean, self-righteous old man named S. Truett Cathy, has every right to hold an opinion on the subject that’s different from mine and to contribute money to organizations which want to enforce his beliefs on others by political action.  It’s crazy and un-American but he has every right to do it.

At the same time, though, I think it’s outrageous that the mayors of three major cities have used their positions to try and keep Chick-fil-A out of their cities.  It’s none of the state’s business what the CEO of a company thinks or what causes he wishes to contribute to.  It’s my business, as a moral being and responsible citizen, to boycott enterprises that I think promote prejudice, but it’s not the state’s business, unless the enterprise is actively violating the laws against discrimination.  (It’s hard to imagine that an openly gay person would get a fair hearing at a Chick-fil-A job interview, but no one has offered any evidence that they don’t.)

I have no plans to vacation in Boston or Chicago or San Francisco, but if I did I’d change them and go somewhere else.  What the mayors of those cities have done is just as un-American as wanting to deny civil rights to gays, and more disturbing because it has the force of state power behind it.

I hope everyone will join me in boycotting Chick-fil-A — don’t be Cathy’s clown, however good his food is — and the cities of Boston, Chicago and San Francisco, where knee-jerk liberalism and pandering to interest-groups has gotten way out of hand, violating the best traditions of American liberty.

[Recently, Chick-fil-A issued a statement saying, “Going forward, our intent is to leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena.”  If that means the company will stop funneling money to groups advocating in the political arena for the denial of civil rights to gays, I’ll happily go back to Chick-fil-A — their food is, after all, damn good stuff.]

America has a strain of darkness that runs deep in its history and its nature, but I don’t think America has ever gone through a period where its native darkness was as pervasive and unopposed as it is now. The Republican Party, led or driven by the rancid, irrational wickedness of the Tea Party, has adopted a course of obstructionism and nihilism that I think is fair to call treasonous — it would rather see the republic perish than see it survive or prosper under some system other than one it prefers.

All the forces that might normally oppose such madness have been lulled to sleep by the soothing rhetoric of the coward Obama, the ultimate Wall Street stooge.

I remember talking to blacks in the 60s who said they preferred the open and frank racism of the South to the covert and hypocritical racism of the North, because in the South you knew what you were up against — you knew who your enemies were and thus had a better sense of how to fight them.

For this reason, I think it’s essential to get the covert and hypocritical Obama out of the White House, and replace him with an enemy who has the courage to state his shameful intentions openly. This is the only way that an effective opposition to those intentions can come into being.

Whoever you vote for in November, this guy will still be President.

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I was channel surfing today and stumbled on Jill Stein’s speech at the Green Party convention, accepting its nomination for President (of the United States.) She was announcing a list of regulatory reforms for financial markets she would support as President. They were all simple, rational and essential reforms but, in the current political climate, sounded radical.

She won’t be allowed into the Presidential debates, but if she were she would mop the floor with Romney and Obama, not because she has a excess of charisma but because someone talking rationally about important subjects would frankly expose Willard and Barry as the corporate spokesmodels they are.

A vote for Stein will be the only meaningful one you can cast this November, but we have to face the fact that a lot of people really enjoy having smoke blown up their asses. So go ahead, America — pull down your pants and get ready to bend over one more time.