Apparently Our Hero didn’t get the memo that the original Ceiling Cat is a drywall-dwelling fraud.

[via Know Your Meme]

In 1982, the year after we graduated college, 26,173 Americans died in drunk-driving accidents — 60 percent of all automobile deaths that year, in a population of some 231 million souls.

A generation later — in 2010 — the drunk-driver death toll was down to 10,228, or 31 percent of the total carnage. In a nation that had swelled to 308 million.

Also in 1982, 32,957 Americans died from firearms, the vast majority homicides and suicides. By 2009, that had plunged to — well, 31,347. Certainly a reduction if you grade on the population curve, but not a two-thirds reduction.

We chose the starting date for a few reasons.

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We’re being told by starry-eyed political commentators that with the selection of Paul Ryan, the election has become a civics geek’s wet dream: a stark choice between Governing Philosophies.

To which we laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

It would be nice if that were the case. It would be nice if Americans were offered an Honest Choice, instead of one side doing its darned best to keep the other side from voting. It would be nice if one side had the courage of its loudly proclaimed convictions, instead of cravenly stacking the deck every chance it gets.

But that’s not why we laugh.

We laugh at the suggestion that Paul Ryan offers anything approximating a Governing Philosophy. We laugh at the insistence that Paul Ryan holds the real power among Republicans, and that Mitt Romney is just a figurehead.

We laugh, because Paul Ryan is a Toady.

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When we were a kid, Disaster Preparedness entailed freaking out over fires, floods, and nukes. (Or earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes, depending on what form of God’s Wrath your sinful region could be expected to suffer.)

What it didn’t entail was our local municipality using part of a Homeland Security grant to demonstrate how to survive an idiot with an assault weapon.

You might ask whether the money would be better spent keeping assault weapons out of the hands of idiots in the first place. And if you do, why do you hate America?

Ready Houston? [City of Houston, via Know Your Meme]

During our Summer Vacation! from blogging, we’ve been trying to nail down what annoys the shit out of us about American politics.

The proximate cause was the situation we found ourself in at the end of Spring: With the Republican nomination decided, the Usual Suspects were saying the Usual Things, and after four years, we had exhausted our Usual Responses to them. It had all become Kabuki theater. Or endless reruns.

Also, there’s not much to say about Mitt’s Lies, except that Mitt is an Interminable Liar. Ideologues are a lot more fun. Ideologues seriously propose American statehood for Moon bases.

But it wasn’t until listening to Dana Gould’s latest podcast — Gould is best known as a former Simpsons writer — that we heard the specific reason for our Summer of Discontent:

“Politics is professional wrestling with ties.”

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The Higgs Boson … got an A in physics but damn if I get all of this:

[via Know Your Meme]