Dear Governor Brewer,
I know you've received a great deal of correspondence in regard to your position as our state's Racist in Chief. That must be taking up an awful lot of your time, but I hope you'll fit my letter into your busy schedule, because this isn't about that.
This is about the special election you wanted, the one wherein the citizens of Arizona get to decide whether or not to impose upon themselves a one-cent sales tax. With the threat of even more cuts to education and public safety held over our heads, it doesn't seem so much like a vote as participation (from the bad end of things) in an overt act of blackmail.
I'm actually one of those lucky people who gets to send in an early ballot. I just wanted you to know that I filled out that ballot today and will be sending it in tomorrow, a good two weeks ahead of schedule.
I voted 'no'. It's not just that, as a guy with no kids, I have no skin in the game. My decision was based more on principle than greed; I am, after all, not a Republican.
First of all, it's not as though Arizona is doing a very good job of educating our children, regardless of how much we spend (or don't spend). We're what, 49th overall? Thank God for Arkansas, I guess. I also believe we are over-policed, with multiple layers of law enforcement, each with bloated budgets and too much power.
The other thing is that I don't believe that you, or any of your conservative cronies in the state legislature, would really be so stupid as to cut education funding even deeper than y'all already have. It would be - even in a state with such a large retiree population - political suicide. If that would shorten y'all's reign of idiocy in Arizona, well, I'm all for that.
On the other hand, it almost seems as if you want to further slash scholastic appropriations, which would explain why you would foist this sales tax vote upon a public that is notoriously averse to taxation. But that would be giving y'all way too much credit.
I figure if the majority of voters agree with me, and I suspect they do, that you'll find that money elsewhere. Maybe it will come from property taxes, maybe it will come from an increase in corporate taxes, maybe you'll turn I-10 into a toll road. I don't really care how you do it, or if you do it at all.
Arizona already has one of the highest sales tax rates in the country. Now the City of Phoenix has implemented a 2 percent sales tax on food, I hardly think that now is the time for you Republicans to ride in on our backs to save education and public safety funding from the perilous position in which y'all have put them.
I hope this letter has, at least momentarily, taken your mind off the fact that the anti-immigrant bill you signed has made our beautiful state appear to be so terribly ugly on the national stage. And, ah, good luck in November.
Don't worry. It'll probably be okay. Thanks to generations of GOP efforts, most of us are just as dumb as you are.
pH 4.28.1o
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
Notes from Hell
Here in Arizona we like to say we have "taken our country back", but we never finish that sentence. More to the point, we have taken our country back about 50 years, with a new immigration law that places all people of non-White ancestry under an unnecessary - and probably unconstitutional - microscope.
By the way, beyond Charles Keating, this is the only way we've ever made the national news. It takes a governor, such as Evan Mecham, dumb enough to utter words like "pickaninny". Or a Senator, like John McCain, nasty enough to vote against Martin Luther King Day. Or some gun-toting nut at a protest.
That's macro, though, a bird's eye view of Arizona as seen by the rest of the Union. If one looks at it from the inside, one will notice that we're actually much more of a basket case than we seem on the surface. For instance, we've closed many of our state parks and rest areas, hoping to shave a few hundred thousand dollars off our $2 billion state budget deficit.
Yes, this is the home of Congressman Trent Franks, who called President Obama "an enemy of humanity". It's also the state that recently passed a bill requiring the president to present his birth certificate (cuckoo, cuckoo) in order to be on the ballot in 2o12... There go those precious 11 electoral college votes.
The same good ol' boy who brought us this immigration bill, Russell Pearce, recently wrote up a bill that did away with the need for Arizonans to have a permit to carry concealed weapons. Governer Jan Brewer signed that one into law, too; this stroke of genius came on the heels of a cost-cutting meausure that released some 17,000 mental-health patients onto the streets.
Brewer had a tough choice to make with this immigration bill. Sign it and she loses the bulk of the Latino vote come November. Veto it and she gets buried in the primary and November never matters. She made a choice based on political survival and nothing more. And she's the least of our worries.
We have a less-than-civic-minded Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, who wants to supplant her as governor. We have an ethically challenged former County Attorney, Andrew Thomas, who dreams of being Attorney General. We have a mentally challenged former Representative, J.D. Hayworth, aspiring to replace McCain as our senator.
In Arizona, the idiots get promoted. How do you suppose Brewer made it this far in the first place?
There's plenty more, but just from the few things I've mentioned, most reasonable people will come to the conclusion that Arizona has the greatest level of dysfunction among all 50 states. Politically speaking, it may even be worse off than our two occupied countries, Iraq and Afghanistan.
One consistent thread runs through these horror stories: The Republican Party. All of this and so much more can be laid directly on that sorry doorstep. Is Arizona an accurate reflection of unbridled conservatism?
Yes. But it's not like the usual one you'd find in a mirror. It's more like a reflection of the desert sun itself. Look at it long enough and your eyes will burn right out of your head - not so much physics, in this case, as a defense mechanism of the soul.
pH 4.23.1o
By the way, beyond Charles Keating, this is the only way we've ever made the national news. It takes a governor, such as Evan Mecham, dumb enough to utter words like "pickaninny". Or a Senator, like John McCain, nasty enough to vote against Martin Luther King Day. Or some gun-toting nut at a protest.
That's macro, though, a bird's eye view of Arizona as seen by the rest of the Union. If one looks at it from the inside, one will notice that we're actually much more of a basket case than we seem on the surface. For instance, we've closed many of our state parks and rest areas, hoping to shave a few hundred thousand dollars off our $2 billion state budget deficit.
Yes, this is the home of Congressman Trent Franks, who called President Obama "an enemy of humanity". It's also the state that recently passed a bill requiring the president to present his birth certificate (cuckoo, cuckoo) in order to be on the ballot in 2o12... There go those precious 11 electoral college votes.
The same good ol' boy who brought us this immigration bill, Russell Pearce, recently wrote up a bill that did away with the need for Arizonans to have a permit to carry concealed weapons. Governer Jan Brewer signed that one into law, too; this stroke of genius came on the heels of a cost-cutting meausure that released some 17,000 mental-health patients onto the streets.
Brewer had a tough choice to make with this immigration bill. Sign it and she loses the bulk of the Latino vote come November. Veto it and she gets buried in the primary and November never matters. She made a choice based on political survival and nothing more. And she's the least of our worries.
We have a less-than-civic-minded Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, who wants to supplant her as governor. We have an ethically challenged former County Attorney, Andrew Thomas, who dreams of being Attorney General. We have a mentally challenged former Representative, J.D. Hayworth, aspiring to replace McCain as our senator.
In Arizona, the idiots get promoted. How do you suppose Brewer made it this far in the first place?
There's plenty more, but just from the few things I've mentioned, most reasonable people will come to the conclusion that Arizona has the greatest level of dysfunction among all 50 states. Politically speaking, it may even be worse off than our two occupied countries, Iraq and Afghanistan.
One consistent thread runs through these horror stories: The Republican Party. All of this and so much more can be laid directly on that sorry doorstep. Is Arizona an accurate reflection of unbridled conservatism?
Yes. But it's not like the usual one you'd find in a mirror. It's more like a reflection of the desert sun itself. Look at it long enough and your eyes will burn right out of your head - not so much physics, in this case, as a defense mechanism of the soul.
pH 4.23.1o
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Flat Tires and Gun Rallies
Yesterday was another angry day in America, almost. On the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing the media was abuzz with interest in the rancor that has gripped this country since Barack Obama was elected some 500 days ago.
The bigots and malcontents that make up the so-called Tea Party were out in force, playing make-believe at "Second Amendment" rallies in and around Washington, D.C., even though there aren't really any Second Amendment issues to be heard in government these days. They showed up with their guns anyway, perpetual adolescents that they are.
Not a single hour has passed without a bombardment of bitter (and often hateful) criticism directed at our nation's first African-American president. It isn't going to stop, not until the FCC wakes up from its Rip van Winkle slumber, and realizes that there is a public-interest clause in all of those broadcasting licenses.
With the steady conservative drumbeat of anger, anger, anger (in the Bush years it was fear, fear, fear) pulsing in our heads, Americans have grown nervous. The breathy intonations of paranoid conservative pundits has driven us too far. The squealing minority with its faux Klan rallies has hindered our economic recovery as well.
Bill Clinton, finally, had much to say about this. He has expressed a fountain of concern just lately, using the McVeigh massacre to drive home the point - the fact - that stoking unbridled hatred of government can lead, and has led, to a level of violence that touches everyone. It might be too little, too late, but at least he can sleep at night knowing he tried.
Only the Republican Party has anything to gain from Americans rattling their sabres at each other. There have been no demonstrations conducted by left-wingers spewing acid about socialism, communism, Marxism, Maoism, statism, fascism and even terrorism. Conservative lawmakers have not been targeted with death threats and fake anthrax envelopes.
Most likely, the 82 percent of the population who refuses to be identified with the GOP has noticed, and will not reward the conservative movement with any augmentation of power in Congress. You have to earn such a reward, and they have been irresponsible in ways never seen before in our history, at least not since the Civil War.
And all of this is academic. I say that because of something I saw yesterday in the parking lot of a boring little shopping center in Mesa, Arizona. In the course of my busy day, as I backed out of my parking space, I noticed a Hispanic woman hunched down next to the right front wheel of her beat-up old minivan. She had a flat tire.
Her kids stood by, looking bored, as she fiddled with the plastic caps covering the lug nuts. The jack lay on its side next to the vehicle, waiting to be put to use, and it was a nice day for it. I have very few rules in life, but one of them is that I don't let women change tires in front of me.
I was just getting back into my parking space when a younger guy came cruising in on a bicycle. He was an African-American who wore his hair in dreadlocks. He stopped on a dime, hopped off his bike, and strode purposefully to the back of the minivan to retrieve the spare. With no hesitation, he crouched down in front of the disabled wheel, and proceeded busting the lug nuts.
That's when it occurred to me that America will be fine. We're going to come together and solve our problems. I have seen it with my eyes. The ordinary people will take care of things. The young people. The real people. Not the freaks on television and talk-radio.
The Tea Party is a creation of conservative media. It is a megaphone for the clueless. And it will soon enough fade into history, like hoop skirts and bobby socks, like 8-track tapes, and any violence that takes place will be forgotten because it will have made no difference. In another generation we will look back and wonder what the big deal was.
If you love your country you should act like it. If you don't, you'll have to pardon the rest of us as we swim around you on our way forward, paying you no more attention than you really ever deserved.
pH 4.2o.1o
The bigots and malcontents that make up the so-called Tea Party were out in force, playing make-believe at "Second Amendment" rallies in and around Washington, D.C., even though there aren't really any Second Amendment issues to be heard in government these days. They showed up with their guns anyway, perpetual adolescents that they are.
Not a single hour has passed without a bombardment of bitter (and often hateful) criticism directed at our nation's first African-American president. It isn't going to stop, not until the FCC wakes up from its Rip van Winkle slumber, and realizes that there is a public-interest clause in all of those broadcasting licenses.
With the steady conservative drumbeat of anger, anger, anger (in the Bush years it was fear, fear, fear) pulsing in our heads, Americans have grown nervous. The breathy intonations of paranoid conservative pundits has driven us too far. The squealing minority with its faux Klan rallies has hindered our economic recovery as well.
Bill Clinton, finally, had much to say about this. He has expressed a fountain of concern just lately, using the McVeigh massacre to drive home the point - the fact - that stoking unbridled hatred of government can lead, and has led, to a level of violence that touches everyone. It might be too little, too late, but at least he can sleep at night knowing he tried.
Only the Republican Party has anything to gain from Americans rattling their sabres at each other. There have been no demonstrations conducted by left-wingers spewing acid about socialism, communism, Marxism, Maoism, statism, fascism and even terrorism. Conservative lawmakers have not been targeted with death threats and fake anthrax envelopes.
Most likely, the 82 percent of the population who refuses to be identified with the GOP has noticed, and will not reward the conservative movement with any augmentation of power in Congress. You have to earn such a reward, and they have been irresponsible in ways never seen before in our history, at least not since the Civil War.
And all of this is academic. I say that because of something I saw yesterday in the parking lot of a boring little shopping center in Mesa, Arizona. In the course of my busy day, as I backed out of my parking space, I noticed a Hispanic woman hunched down next to the right front wheel of her beat-up old minivan. She had a flat tire.
Her kids stood by, looking bored, as she fiddled with the plastic caps covering the lug nuts. The jack lay on its side next to the vehicle, waiting to be put to use, and it was a nice day for it. I have very few rules in life, but one of them is that I don't let women change tires in front of me.
I was just getting back into my parking space when a younger guy came cruising in on a bicycle. He was an African-American who wore his hair in dreadlocks. He stopped on a dime, hopped off his bike, and strode purposefully to the back of the minivan to retrieve the spare. With no hesitation, he crouched down in front of the disabled wheel, and proceeded busting the lug nuts.
That's when it occurred to me that America will be fine. We're going to come together and solve our problems. I have seen it with my eyes. The ordinary people will take care of things. The young people. The real people. Not the freaks on television and talk-radio.
The Tea Party is a creation of conservative media. It is a megaphone for the clueless. And it will soon enough fade into history, like hoop skirts and bobby socks, like 8-track tapes, and any violence that takes place will be forgotten because it will have made no difference. In another generation we will look back and wonder what the big deal was.
If you love your country you should act like it. If you don't, you'll have to pardon the rest of us as we swim around you on our way forward, paying you no more attention than you really ever deserved.
pH 4.2o.1o
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Some Records Were Made to Be Broken
Humanity seeks. Our endless quest for knowledge and understanding has led us out of the primordial pudding and into every corner of the Earth and into the outreaches of space. We have tracked Bigfoot, cleaned out the Pyramids and hunted for D.B. Cooper's cash. Even with our Smithsonian bent we have yet to discover one great and elusive mystery:
Republican leadership. Where is it? A recent gathering of high-ranking conservatives in New Orleans brings us no closer to the answer. Judging from that pep rally, there are three basic categories of Republican leadership. There are the pea-brains, there are the broken records, and there are the shrieking shrews.
Newt Gingrich is a good example of a broken record. Glenn Beck is clearly a pea-brain. Sarah Palin is a shrieking shrew. Michelle Bachmann, that rare jewel, is an amalgam of all three.
One really has to wonder who the next presidential candidate will be. So far, the roster of hopefuls reads like a list of B actors, washouts and losers of past races. Mitt Romney couldn't get past the rudimentary stages of the 2oo8 Republican primary. Sarah Palin sank the McCain ticket like the human torpedo that she is.
Rudy Giuliani isn't interested because he knows America isn't interested in him. Gingrich has more baggage than an airline conveyor belt. Mike Huckabee is what the U.S. Navy would call an LST (large, slow target). Bobby Jindahl fumbled and fidgeted like a fifth-grader in his last turn in the national spotlight.
Mike Pence of Indiana? Okay. Eric Cantor of North Carolina? He'd be the embodiment of the Washington Generals against Barack Obama's Harlem Globetrotters. Am I missing anyone? Could a write-in candidate (say Porky Pig or Mickey Mouse) actually do better than this collection of misfits?
John Boehner is a blubbering mess. Mitch McConnell is one of the more confused people you will ever find holding public office. In any case, neither of them wants to leave their cocoons of Congressional power, and no wonder. That's why they're quietly recruiting Gen. David Petraeus - his record doesn't automatically paint him as a lunatic.
The GOP simply lacks leadership. Their most effective spokesmen happen to be talk-radio show hosts who seem more beholden to the masses than to the stuffed suits who hope to get elected despite their decidedly non-mainstream views. That's a good strategy for getting ratings and selling commercials, and that's about all.
Pea brains. Broken records. Shrieking shrews. Our endless pursuit of information cannot turn over anything other than that in the world of right-wing politics. That's why they're out of power today, and will remain so until they come up with something more to offer to the American people.
Who knows how long that could take? We may well find the Lost Dutchman's gold before then. At the rate they're going, conservatives would be lucky to elect a representative from Area 51. Or Loch Ness, which may be in another country, but can allegedly be seen from certain parts of Alaska.
pH 4.13.1o
Republican leadership. Where is it? A recent gathering of high-ranking conservatives in New Orleans brings us no closer to the answer. Judging from that pep rally, there are three basic categories of Republican leadership. There are the pea-brains, there are the broken records, and there are the shrieking shrews.
Newt Gingrich is a good example of a broken record. Glenn Beck is clearly a pea-brain. Sarah Palin is a shrieking shrew. Michelle Bachmann, that rare jewel, is an amalgam of all three.
One really has to wonder who the next presidential candidate will be. So far, the roster of hopefuls reads like a list of B actors, washouts and losers of past races. Mitt Romney couldn't get past the rudimentary stages of the 2oo8 Republican primary. Sarah Palin sank the McCain ticket like the human torpedo that she is.
Rudy Giuliani isn't interested because he knows America isn't interested in him. Gingrich has more baggage than an airline conveyor belt. Mike Huckabee is what the U.S. Navy would call an LST (large, slow target). Bobby Jindahl fumbled and fidgeted like a fifth-grader in his last turn in the national spotlight.
Mike Pence of Indiana? Okay. Eric Cantor of North Carolina? He'd be the embodiment of the Washington Generals against Barack Obama's Harlem Globetrotters. Am I missing anyone? Could a write-in candidate (say Porky Pig or Mickey Mouse) actually do better than this collection of misfits?
John Boehner is a blubbering mess. Mitch McConnell is one of the more confused people you will ever find holding public office. In any case, neither of them wants to leave their cocoons of Congressional power, and no wonder. That's why they're quietly recruiting Gen. David Petraeus - his record doesn't automatically paint him as a lunatic.
The GOP simply lacks leadership. Their most effective spokesmen happen to be talk-radio show hosts who seem more beholden to the masses than to the stuffed suits who hope to get elected despite their decidedly non-mainstream views. That's a good strategy for getting ratings and selling commercials, and that's about all.
Pea brains. Broken records. Shrieking shrews. Our endless pursuit of information cannot turn over anything other than that in the world of right-wing politics. That's why they're out of power today, and will remain so until they come up with something more to offer to the American people.
Who knows how long that could take? We may well find the Lost Dutchman's gold before then. At the rate they're going, conservatives would be lucky to elect a representative from Area 51. Or Loch Ness, which may be in another country, but can allegedly be seen from certain parts of Alaska.
pH 4.13.1o
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
The Best of Times, the End of Times
The end is near, I hear, and this time the doomsday prophets might just be right. Look at the spate of earthquakes lately and it's easy to conclude that God might indeed be angry with us. Lord knows He's got enough reasons.
I'm a Catholic, actually, and we have a direct line to God on matters such as this. So I checked it out, and He said, yes. The world's going to end. Soon. Of course, Heaven time isn't the same as Eastern Standard, or exactly in lockstep with the atomic clock. So "soon" could mean anything.
It's all over the place, this Rapture crap, taken out of the Book of Revelation (which was penned a century or so after the crucifixion of Christ). It amounts to the angry rants of an offshoot sect of Christianity, not unlike the Book of Jubilees, which was not allowed into the Bible by the men who produced it.
Since they'll apparently believe anything, conservatives who say they're ready to go "home" should know that they're off the hook now, all kinds of hooks in fact. You've already stopped paying your mortgage... Now it seems as though you don't really have to pay for anything anymore. Because, you know, these are the End Times.
Who would pay their bills if they really believed the apocalypse was upon us? That kind of eliminates the need to pay taxes, too; it's not as though the heathens and blasphemes in Washington are going to do anything good with that money anyhow. To hell with the law.
If you think about it long enough, you'll realize that the Ten Commandments today are just as obsolete as the tax code. After all, not paying your mortgage and bills amounts to stealing, so there goes the one about not doing that. And down the whole thing tumbles.
Ask David Vitter or John Ensign (or a host of other good GOP family men) about Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery. Conservatives admire those people and champion them as their leaders. Basically, with the Big Ten out of fashion and the End Times upon us, you right-wingers can feel free to cuss out your parents, carve Buddahs from soap and violate your neighbor's donkey.
Oh, and you'll get to kill, because that's the real message of Christianity anyway. No more prohibition on that, and just in time, right? It's so much easier than building an ark...
That must be what was going through the head of Charles Wilson, 63, of Selah, Washington, who was arrested for making multiple death threats against Sen. Patty Murray. That's absolutely what was in the minds of the Hutaree militia in southeast Michigan, which planned to murder police officers in hopes of starting some sort of revolution.
Word to the wise: For those who would revolt, it will surely be the end of the world as they know it. This is not Bill Clinton's national defense. The last administration made a blunder of Biblical proportions in the Middle East a while back, and as a result, the National Guard is kind of on the hard and edgy side now.
Take your chances if you must, in Jesus' name I suppose. Have fun. And don't forget your Saint Christopher medal.
pH 4.o7.1o
I'm a Catholic, actually, and we have a direct line to God on matters such as this. So I checked it out, and He said, yes. The world's going to end. Soon. Of course, Heaven time isn't the same as Eastern Standard, or exactly in lockstep with the atomic clock. So "soon" could mean anything.
It's all over the place, this Rapture crap, taken out of the Book of Revelation (which was penned a century or so after the crucifixion of Christ). It amounts to the angry rants of an offshoot sect of Christianity, not unlike the Book of Jubilees, which was not allowed into the Bible by the men who produced it.
Since they'll apparently believe anything, conservatives who say they're ready to go "home" should know that they're off the hook now, all kinds of hooks in fact. You've already stopped paying your mortgage... Now it seems as though you don't really have to pay for anything anymore. Because, you know, these are the End Times.
Who would pay their bills if they really believed the apocalypse was upon us? That kind of eliminates the need to pay taxes, too; it's not as though the heathens and blasphemes in Washington are going to do anything good with that money anyhow. To hell with the law.
If you think about it long enough, you'll realize that the Ten Commandments today are just as obsolete as the tax code. After all, not paying your mortgage and bills amounts to stealing, so there goes the one about not doing that. And down the whole thing tumbles.
Ask David Vitter or John Ensign (or a host of other good GOP family men) about Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery. Conservatives admire those people and champion them as their leaders. Basically, with the Big Ten out of fashion and the End Times upon us, you right-wingers can feel free to cuss out your parents, carve Buddahs from soap and violate your neighbor's donkey.
Oh, and you'll get to kill, because that's the real message of Christianity anyway. No more prohibition on that, and just in time, right? It's so much easier than building an ark...
That must be what was going through the head of Charles Wilson, 63, of Selah, Washington, who was arrested for making multiple death threats against Sen. Patty Murray. That's absolutely what was in the minds of the Hutaree militia in southeast Michigan, which planned to murder police officers in hopes of starting some sort of revolution.
Word to the wise: For those who would revolt, it will surely be the end of the world as they know it. This is not Bill Clinton's national defense. The last administration made a blunder of Biblical proportions in the Middle East a while back, and as a result, the National Guard is kind of on the hard and edgy side now.
Take your chances if you must, in Jesus' name I suppose. Have fun. And don't forget your Saint Christopher medal.
pH 4.o7.1o
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Republican National Clowns
Has anyone noticed the civil war going on in our midst? Not in the country. In the Republican Party. Right-wing pundits have worked the extemists of the Party into a teetering mess, bordering on the brink of terrorism. No tactic is considered off the chart because no candidate is conservative enough.
Then consider the embarrassing foibles of the Republican National Committee, with its donors' money spent curiously in bondage clubs and clothing boutiques, at liquor stores and on power-raves. As a result, the war chest is nearly empty, and the election cycle has barely just begun.
Even if RNC chairperson Michael Steele resigns (as many top Republicans have, ahem, suggested), what gives rank and file conservatives any confidence that their next hire won't be worse, say Liz Cheney or Bozo the Clown?
It all speaks to judgment and character. The GOP has displayed neither and shows no signs of doing so anytime soon.
Neither the daffy RNC nor the crazy Tea Party inspires much in the way of faith, and in those circles, faith equals money. In the minds of conservatives, God is mamman. That's why the money dried up.
The dip in private donations probably won't matter since the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are actually people, albeit ones dispossessed from - again - judgment and character (to say nothing of a conscience). So the cash will flow in to conservative coffers this summer, and their constituents will be even less served than they were before.
No matter what, political observers expect Republicans to pull in fewer seats than the usual minority resurgence allows in a midterm election. Democrats in November will be facing a roster of broke and tattered candidates following vicious primary races fueled by Tea Party hysteria.
Besides that, they're are saddled with a track record that didn't exist in the hallowed year of Nineteen Hundred and Ninety Four. Americans pretty much understand what was done to them in the first eight years of this millennium. Putting the GOP back in power would surely beget another war, further encroachment upon our civil liberties and a complete re-collapse of the financial system.
That's why not many Democrats, in or out of office, seem overly concerned as the calendar pages turn. The opposition has spent the last year and a half offering and doing absolutely nothing. Imagine these were your employees... Oh, wait; they are. Does anyone really want to support this bunch?
Be my guest (and, unlike the telephone numbers on various RNC begging letters, I swear this is not a porn connection):
https://secure1.gop.com/site/apps/ka/sd/donorcustom.asp?c=ouITL8MRJrE&b=5403197
Go ahead. I'm sure Michael Steele could use another rack of designer clothes, or some more whips and ball-gags, perhaps a few more gallons of booze. Or, most needed of all, a colorful little car to take him and all of his friends to the center ring one more time.
pH 4.o3.1o
Then consider the embarrassing foibles of the Republican National Committee, with its donors' money spent curiously in bondage clubs and clothing boutiques, at liquor stores and on power-raves. As a result, the war chest is nearly empty, and the election cycle has barely just begun.
Even if RNC chairperson Michael Steele resigns (as many top Republicans have, ahem, suggested), what gives rank and file conservatives any confidence that their next hire won't be worse, say Liz Cheney or Bozo the Clown?
It all speaks to judgment and character. The GOP has displayed neither and shows no signs of doing so anytime soon.
Neither the daffy RNC nor the crazy Tea Party inspires much in the way of faith, and in those circles, faith equals money. In the minds of conservatives, God is mamman. That's why the money dried up.
The dip in private donations probably won't matter since the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are actually people, albeit ones dispossessed from - again - judgment and character (to say nothing of a conscience). So the cash will flow in to conservative coffers this summer, and their constituents will be even less served than they were before.
No matter what, political observers expect Republicans to pull in fewer seats than the usual minority resurgence allows in a midterm election. Democrats in November will be facing a roster of broke and tattered candidates following vicious primary races fueled by Tea Party hysteria.
Besides that, they're are saddled with a track record that didn't exist in the hallowed year of Nineteen Hundred and Ninety Four. Americans pretty much understand what was done to them in the first eight years of this millennium. Putting the GOP back in power would surely beget another war, further encroachment upon our civil liberties and a complete re-collapse of the financial system.
That's why not many Democrats, in or out of office, seem overly concerned as the calendar pages turn. The opposition has spent the last year and a half offering and doing absolutely nothing. Imagine these were your employees... Oh, wait; they are. Does anyone really want to support this bunch?
Be my guest (and, unlike the telephone numbers on various RNC begging letters, I swear this is not a porn connection):
https://secure1.gop.com/site/apps/ka/sd/donorcustom.asp?c=ouITL8MRJrE&b=5403197
Go ahead. I'm sure Michael Steele could use another rack of designer clothes, or some more whips and ball-gags, perhaps a few more gallons of booze. Or, most needed of all, a colorful little car to take him and all of his friends to the center ring one more time.
pH 4.o3.1o
Thursday, April 1, 2010
The Roundup
Well, it came in the mail today. They always said it would, and it did. I was one who scoffed at their wild-eyed predictions, their doomsday scenarios, their dungeons in the sky. I would listen with a very small grin on my face as they spoke, picturing the obligatory tin-foil hats atop their pointy heads.
It came in the mail. How innocuous; really, what a paltry approach to this sort of thing. Give the bad news to a letter carrier and have it dropped in my mailbox. I didn't see it coming. I didn't see it arrive. And here it is in my hands, an order from my government.
Turn in your guns. By the end of the month. Not even a "please".
That's dicey for me, because I've bought and sold (or given away) an awful lot of guns in the past fifteen years. There was the 9mm I pawned, the .38 that went to the plumber as payment for service rendered, that horrible .41 magnum I sold to Tommy the Pressman. Then there was the .22 I gave to Roy for Christmas, the other .22 I swapped to Greg for a guitar, and the other .22 that went to...
Well, you get the picture. And those were just the handguns (the rifles - oh, God). Kind of hard to turn all that stuff in now. I sure hope Uncle Sam understands.
April Fool, by the way. But you knew that, didn't you? Seventeen months into his first term, President Obama hasn't bothered to take away my guns. Or your guns. Or anyone else's guns. Wait, let me guess; he just hasn't done it yet. Here's your tin foil.
The notion - no, the fear that a Democratic president is out to confiscate our weapons has been fomented by right-wing lunatics for decades now. Did Bill Clinton take our guns? No. Jimmy Carter? Nah. How about LBJ/JFK? Nope. Truman? Please. Roosevelt?
Anybody?
Never happened. It turns out that the same people who have been throwing that boogeyman under your bed every night are the same ones who told you that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. That stem cells were evil. That the rich needed tax cuts.
Now they say that Obama is a socialist. That he's not an American citizen. That health care is tyranny. That global warming is a hoax. And that the rich, of course, need even more tax cuts. It's so evident as to sting like a slap in the face.
Everything conservatives think, believe and know is wrong. That's why I support the new Obama initiative to open re-education camps for those in the minority who are so clearly headed in the wrong direction (and would like to take the rest of us with them).
Say, I did it again, didn't I? That's two pranks in one column - no fair. Oh, well. For some people, for some reason, it seems like every day is April Fool's Day.
pH 4.o1.1o
It came in the mail. How innocuous; really, what a paltry approach to this sort of thing. Give the bad news to a letter carrier and have it dropped in my mailbox. I didn't see it coming. I didn't see it arrive. And here it is in my hands, an order from my government.
Turn in your guns. By the end of the month. Not even a "please".
That's dicey for me, because I've bought and sold (or given away) an awful lot of guns in the past fifteen years. There was the 9mm I pawned, the .38 that went to the plumber as payment for service rendered, that horrible .41 magnum I sold to Tommy the Pressman. Then there was the .22 I gave to Roy for Christmas, the other .22 I swapped to Greg for a guitar, and the other .22 that went to...
Well, you get the picture. And those were just the handguns (the rifles - oh, God). Kind of hard to turn all that stuff in now. I sure hope Uncle Sam understands.
April Fool, by the way. But you knew that, didn't you? Seventeen months into his first term, President Obama hasn't bothered to take away my guns. Or your guns. Or anyone else's guns. Wait, let me guess; he just hasn't done it yet. Here's your tin foil.
The notion - no, the fear that a Democratic president is out to confiscate our weapons has been fomented by right-wing lunatics for decades now. Did Bill Clinton take our guns? No. Jimmy Carter? Nah. How about LBJ/JFK? Nope. Truman? Please. Roosevelt?
Anybody?
Never happened. It turns out that the same people who have been throwing that boogeyman under your bed every night are the same ones who told you that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. That stem cells were evil. That the rich needed tax cuts.
Now they say that Obama is a socialist. That he's not an American citizen. That health care is tyranny. That global warming is a hoax. And that the rich, of course, need even more tax cuts. It's so evident as to sting like a slap in the face.
Everything conservatives think, believe and know is wrong. That's why I support the new Obama initiative to open re-education camps for those in the minority who are so clearly headed in the wrong direction (and would like to take the rest of us with them).
Say, I did it again, didn't I? That's two pranks in one column - no fair. Oh, well. For some people, for some reason, it seems like every day is April Fool's Day.
pH 4.o1.1o
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