Republicans Kind of Suck … Which Is Why They Will Win Huge in November

Written by Frank J. Fleming

This election season has been hard on pundits. The Democrats are going to get massacred in November, and it’s really obvious to pretty much everyone exactly why — which makes writing political commentary like trying to come up with a long-winded explanation for why two plus two equals four.

Here’s my attempt.

Doesn’t it suck when you have a dog that barks all night? Everyone hates that. It’s annoying. It can even drive you pretty crazy if it goes on long enough. People hate that.

Know what also sucks? A zombie apocalypse. That’s when society collapses due to some spreading zombie virus, and most of your friends and family are dead, and you have to scrounge for food to survive while the walking dead threaten you around every corner. People also hate that.

So, we’re all agreed that a barking dog and a zombie apocalypse both suck. Everyone following so far?

Now let’s look at what led us to the political situation we’re in. During the second term of the Bush presidency people just got fed up with Republicans. They were idiots, they were no good at the whole fiscal conservatism thing (which is sort of the whole point of them), we had these wars that seemed to be going nowhere, and the economy was beginning to fail. They sucked, and people were sick and tired of them.

Thus people turned to the Democrats. And Obama.

Let’s just say they also sucked.

AMERICANS: “So, the economy is pretty bad and there’s high employment. You think you can do something about that?”

DEMOCRATS AND OBAMA: “We can spend a trillion dollars we don’t have on pork and stuff.”

AMERICANS: “No … that’s not what we want. We’d really like you not to do that.”

DEMOCRATS: “You’re stupid. We’re doing it anyway.”

AMERICANS: “That’s not going to help us get jobs!”

DEMOCRATS: “Sure it will; millions of them … though they may be invisible. You’ll have to trust us they exist. And guess what else we’ll do: We’ll create a giant new government program to take over health care.”

AMERICANS: “That has nothing to do with jobs!”

DEMOCRATS: “We don’t care about that anymore. We really want a giant new health care program. We’re sure you’ll love it.”

AMERICANS: “Don’t pass that bill. You hear me? Absolutely do not pass that bill.”

DEMOCRATS: “Believe me; you’ll love it. It has … well, I don’t know what exactly is in the bill, but we’re sure it’s great.”

AMERICANS: “Listen to me: DO. NOT. PASS. THAT. BILL.”

DEMOCRATS: “You’re not the boss of me! We’re doing it anyway!”

AMERICANS: “Look what you did! Now the economy is way worse, we’re even deeper in debt, and we have a bunch of new laws we don’t want!”

DEMOCRATS: “You’re racist.”

AMERICANS: “Wha … How is that racist?”

DEMOCRATS: “Now you’re getting violent! Stop being violent and racist, you ignorant hillbillies! And remember to vote Democrat in November.”

So the Democrats sucked. But not just plain old, usual politician sucked, but epic levels of suck where it’s hard to find an analogue in human history that conveys the same level of suckitude. It was sheer incompetence plus arrogance — and those things do not complement each other well. We’re talking sucking that distorts time and space like a black hole.

It’s Godzilla-smashing-through-a-city level of suck — but a really patronizing Godzilla who says you’re just too stupid and hateful to see all the buildings he’s saved or created as he smashes everything apart. Or, to use Obama’s favorite analogy, you have a car stuck in ditch, so you call the mechanic, but the only tool he brings with him is a sledgehammer. And then he smashes your car to pieces and charges you $100,000 for his service. Finally, he calls you racist for complaining. Obama and the Democrats have been so awful, it’s hard for the human brain to even comprehend.

But the Democrats will counter that the Republicans also suck. And while this is true, it’s not really going to help them. As I pointed out before, both a dog incessantly barking and a zombie apocalypse are things that everyone would agree suck. Yet no one during a zombie apocalypse, while hiding out in a boarded up mall, would turn to the other survivors and say, “We don’t want to kill all the zombies; then we’d have to go back to being woken up at night by that annoying dog next door.” But this is the best argument the Democrats can come up with. “Remember how awful the Republicans and Bush were? You hated them. You don’t want to go back to that.” Yes, why would people want to go back to when 6% unemployment was considered high?

People do remember how much the Republicans suck, and they know where it tops out … and that is nowhere near as bad as the Democrats are today. Like with the barking dog, it’s annoying, but you know it’s not going to cause the collapse of civilization as we know it. Not so with the zombie apocalypse; who knows how bad that could get if left to continue? Same with the Democrats and Obama; people have never dealt with anything this horrible their entire lives, and they aren’t that curious to see how much worse it can be.

So the Republicans kinda suck, and that’s why they’re going to win huge this November. Because in the land of epic, mega, ultra, apocalyptic levels of sucking, those who kinda suck are king. Or at least are going to win in a landslide.

Because once the zombie apocalypse is over, the annoying neighbor dog is going to be music to your ears.

For a little while, at least.

Frank J. Fleming writes political humor at IMAO.us and bought a shock collar to keep his dog from barking.

Policy is dead until November.

Image by A National Acrobat via Flickr

This man is bored.

Watching Boehner and Gibbs spar over tax cuts and the collective DNC rip on the same for his tan and smoking, it occurred to me: we're not going to see anything substantive for a couple months.  Just general mud flinging.

Boring.  Really.

Because I would not stop for death...

…it kindly stopped for me. 

Now that I have your attention, and you’ve had a moment to ponder Emily Dickenson, it’s time to ask yourself a question (or four):  does it really matter if I vote?  Because, really, there are so many other people out there, I’m just one vote, and besides, people get manipulated so easily, by Glenn Beck and Fox News, by Obama and his Mile High Stadium theatrics, by anyone who has a mega phone and a glitzy presentation...

So does it matter if I vote?  People are going to do what people are going to do.  I'm just one vote.

Maybe they are manipulated by ignorance and anger, gripping their fears and waiving them like a pitch fork at the boogeyman of the hour, shouting and yelling with delusions of grandeur that they are founders reincarnate, born to bring about a renaissance of American constitutional thought…

But really, why the heck not?  What's wrong if that is their motivation?  What's wrong if it is stirred up and stoked by demagogues and talking heads?

The last year and a half has been, to me, abso-freakin’-lutely fascinating to watch, and occasionally participate in, as a “Professional American” of course, as we have seen the inauguration of America’s mos

t liberal president in several decades, the successful enactment of a number of his legislative goals, the development of a long overdrawn conflict in a country in which no foreign power has ever successfully prosecuted a war (IN THE HISTORY OF MAN, and that’s to say nothing of the moral justification, just, well, I’m just sayin’), the dismissal of a commander for shooting his mouth off, the rise of an entire grassroots political movement initiated in the ranting of a reporter on the floor of the Chicago mercantile exchange, the end of political careers of politicians who found themselves on the wrong side of that movement, and the argument (well discussed here starting July 23) over the designation of a portion of a building for the worship of a particular faith in a place called New York City…oh, also, Lindsey Lohan went to jail, and Paris Hilton finally got caught with cocaine in her purse, (except it wasn’t her purse, even though it looked identically like her purse and contained her credit card…but I digress…).

And that’s to say nothing of “end” of hostilities in Iraq or the economy or federal deficits that we are leaving for our children.

Image by oceandesetoiles via Flickr

It really has been fascinating, if, occasionally, a little frightening.  I've watched elections that will determine the future of a state's representation hinge on under a thousand swing votes, enhanced by outside groups that are representative of the recent "Tea Party" movement.  Maybe it's good and these new representatives (we call them Senators) will be better.  Maybe they won't.  But I wonder: how good for America is what is happening?  How informed are these Tea Party adherents?  Should I consider myself one, too?

Which really speaks to the question at the heart of it: what’s going on?  When this blog started, we were in the midst of the silliest of the silly seasons, the longest Presidential campaign in history, a more than two year marathon by some of the most (if not THE most) ambitious men and woman in our country to obtain the highest office in the land (not counting the Supreme Court, which, I think, would actually be a pretty good gig, too), and we debated and discussed, if we were to boil it all down, HOPE.  Because, really, that’s what the election, like most elections, are about.  Hope.  Hope that the next guy will be better than the last guy, or the current guy, or that the current guy will remain our guy, and will fight for our rights, needs, expectations, hopes… Or gal, as the case may be.  And that election, the election for President, was especially momentous.

So what’s going on, now?  Why, after all that hype, er, I mean hope, why are we so angry?  What’s happened to rationale policy?  To making informed decisions?  Wasn’t that the whole reason we threw out the bums?  Because we wanted new leadership that would get us out of the messes that the old leadership had gotten us into?  Why are people walking around acting like they got lied to?

Were we manipulated?  Is the spin that good? Or is this really the change?  Was the swing from Bush to Obama too dramatic for our country to handle for too long? Anger is what got us here, and hope for change...and suddenly, anger is taking us somewhere else, and I dare not hope against hope that it is not worse than where we were...

Or, to quote one of my favorite motivational posters, are the problems created by the solutions as bad as the solutions they purport to solve?   

I am not a Tea Party-ist, I think, but I am concerned.   I am not an acolyte of the “MoveOn.org” brigade, either (like, uh, duh, Daniel, we knew that, you’re saying).  I am an American, and I do tend to lean to the right.  However, both sides of the spectrum are going further and further to the wings. On one side we have people angry about unconstitutionality of this, that and the other, about immigration, mosques and the 2nd Amendment; on another side, we have people passing unpopular and unfunded policies as fast as they can lest reelection arrive, first; and under it all we have a large amount of debt, a number so large that my mind cannot comprehend its real value.  

Let me say it again: we have a unbelievable amount of federal debt.  And that's the part that scares me the most. I'm all about helping people, about fixing our country's problems, about fighting terror and the Taliban, and all that...but not on my children's dime. And when we are in debt, we are limited in our ability to do the things that really do matter.  

SO...does it matter if you vote? Heck, yes, it matters.  It does, if you show up.  It does, if you get educated.  It does, if you help select the candidates in your primary.  It does, if you encourage rational, smart, normal, and ethical persons to run (heaven forgive us for what we’ve created in Nevada…on both tickets).  It does, if you engage.

Because if you don’t , then in your place the passionate, loud, and often inarticulate individuals who are willing to show up will make all the decisions.  And guess what: they are manipulated and often, not by good people.

Show up.  Show up every day. Make the governing of our country, states, and cities a serious duty in your life.  It matters.

And bring a friend.

Related articles by Zemanta

• TwitPic Blows Paris Hilton's Cocaine Purse Defense Out Of The Water (popcrunch.com)
• Paris Hilton Told Vegas Police Purse & Cocaine Were Not Hers! (brainz.org)
• Nearly 30 Percent Support Tea Party, Poll Finds (politicsdaily.com)
• You: 7 U.S. troops die in weekend violence in Afghanistan (washingtonpost.com)
• Threats increase against Afghan parliamentary candidates (cnn.com)
• Combat Troops in Everything But Name Remain (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
• Tea Party storm brewing (theage.com.au)
• Coming: Great Depression 2 (lewrockwell.com)
• First thoughts: Top 10 Election Night upsets (firstread.msnbc.msn.com)

Protesting Mosques???

I've seen a couple articles and reports in the last week about people who are protesting the building of mosques in their communities, and one near the World Trade Center site.

I'm always surprised when I hear about this kind of thing, and even more surprised when I hear the "logic" that is used by some to justify it.  The Ricky Bobby reasoning used to defend their arguments is extremely simplistic and doesn't really have any "reason" to it.

Sarah Palin is weighing in on the proposed mosque near the WTC, posting on Twitter, ""Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing."

How is a religious group's desire to build a place of worship a provocation?  Hey, there are some Christians who wear sheets on their heads and burn crosses and commit hate-crimes against minorities.  Some Christians dragged a gay man to his death behind a car. 

So by her logic, we should probably ask all the other "Peace-seeking" Christians to stop building their churches too, because that would be best for healing among minority groups and the gay community.
Are you kidding me?  That would never fly among Christians.  They would never even consider it, and why would they?  The people committing these acts of violence and bigotry are the minority among Muslims, as they are among Christians.  Why in the world would you ask people of another faith to do something the majority of Christian Americans would never consider doing? 

Newt Gingrich said, "There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia."  He also said that America is experiencing "an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization."

Seriously?  A lot of women are also forced to wear burkahs in Saudi Arabia.  So are you going to completley ban them here, like they're trying to do in France and other nations around the world?  We're just going to do the opposite of what they do? 

Is this the vision he has of how America should lead the world?  Saudi Arabia has harsh laws that discrimate severely against other religions, women, etc...  So America is justified in doing the same thing?  He wants us  to drop our standards just because some other country does?  You've got to be kidding me.

And what are you going to do with the other mosques already in New York?  Why is this mosque worse than any other mosque already located in the city?  I don't by the 9/11 connection.  That's just using that tragic event to cover up bigotry and fear.

This is pretty sad. We're sending our troops across the world to fight for the freedoms we claim as Americans, and yet right here at home we want to deny those freedoms to our own people.  The majority of the Muslims worshipping at these mosques are Americans just like you and me.

People of all religions died during the 9/11 attacks, to include Muslims.  Muslims are dying in Afghanistan and Iraq right now trying to secure the same freedoms we enjoy here in the US.  Whether it's troops, or policemen, or interpreters, or contractors, or people who work on bases, or voters, or informants, or whatever, they are all MUSLIM. 

And I would dare say that these people, who are working with or for the US, and who are actually at risk every day of being blown up or murdered by actual terrorists (or having their loved ones blown up or murdered by terrorists), are likely doing more to fight for and preserve the values that we strive for than anyone showing up to protest the building of a mosque in their neighborhood.

People are masking their bigotry and prejudices with this idea that all mosques are going to be breading grounds for terrorists. 

The worst part about it is that this the exact kind of twisted logic that Osama Bin Ladin and other crack pots spews about us in the West.

If we don't figure out a way to be better than this, then we'll end up no different.

Back on the Blog!

So I'm dying to get this blog back up and running; my goal is to at least restore it to it's former glory, if not greatly surpass it.

For anyone new to this blog (and any former Professional Americans readers who never knew it), here's a bit of its history: during the last presidential election, my family (my wife, young daughter and even younger son) got really into the debates; my wife was for McCain, I was for Obama, my daughter (6 at the time) was for Hillary, and my son? Well, he was for his Dad.

During that time, then-Senator Obama came under fire in the media for not wearing an American flag pin on his lapel. I thought to myself, "How stupid is that?" and I wanted to express exactly how stupid I thought it was. So I wrote a song about it, and called it "Professional Americans." I got the term from a John Lennon quote, where he referred to someone as a "real professional American."

The song itself has never really been finished, although it may emerge one day soon. But while I was writing the song, I realized I still wanted to say more.

So I started this blog, and invited friends and family to comment and contribute.

I wanted to have a place where people could share their views on all topics (not just politics) in an exciting, heated, yet civil manner, and I thought a blog was perfect.

We had a lot of success all the way through, and even after the election. However, with deployments and travel and work, managing this blog kind of fell to the way side.

But, I am now fresh back from Afghanistan, and just about ready to transfer out of the Seabees (which has been an amazing, but very tiring and time consuming experience), and I'm ready to start upsetting the world with my opinions, and getting upset at theirs!

For a while I was screening all comments, but I am going back to the originial format, where you're free to say and to post what you want. Hopefully whatever we say, or how we say it, will be well thought out, and as civil as possible.

If you want to be an actual contributer to the blog, and make your own posts (which I hope many of you do!), just contact me and I'll give you the necessary permissions. I think you have to have a blogger account to do so; otherwise you can always leave your comments with or without the blogger account.

Additionally, this is now going to be the semi-official blog of my band, "Micromegas". We're working on a second album now, and many of the themes that used to be discussed here have been or will be the topic of a lot of our songs, so it seems like a good fit. I'm not sure yet, but we may actually put the song "Professional Americans" on the next album, and if so, we'll feature it here.

Just like we used to do, the updated blog has a music player.  The songs are normally what I'm currently listening to, or songs from Micromegas, solo work or bands of friends or relatives.  You can always mute it if you prefer not to listen.

Anyways, let's get blogging!

From Gitmo to NY, with love.

Does anyone care that the detainees, non-US citizens accused of, among other things, planning the attack on the World Trade Center, are being transferred to US courts for trial?

All legal arguments aside (at least until someone here raises them), does it strike anyone else as problematic to make prisoners-of-war subject to all of the rights of the US justice system?

Take it from there.

The Toothless Lion? A "humble superpower" may be powerless

I'm still not sure what to think about all this humility that our nation's administration is now confessing. While I wrote papers about the advantages of multilateral action in foreign policy as an undergrad, I have yet to see the United States find a happy medium between the thundering of American military might acting alone (as in Iraq and Afghanistan with a modicum of assistance from the Brits, Eastern Europe, and India) and the pacifist talk of treaty and agreement signing folk like prime minister Neville Chamberlain on the eve of WWII. Is it enough to tell people and nations we want to be friends, or do we dare back up our foreign policy with military might? Is there ever a justification for "going it alone?"

It's a perplexing question, and I think one not easily, or cleanly, answered. Blanket "yeas" or "nays" in one direction or the other are going to push us to either war-hawk violence or to peace-nik vulnerability. Neither extreme considers the exertation of our first president, as articulated by our third, to avoid entangling alliances , yet still be the friend of all nations or, as required by the Constitution, to provide for the common defense , against enemies abroad and amongst us...

And I do believe those enemies exist, and I do believe they must be fought. On that happy medium, one man summed up carefully, in as few words as I think could be used, the philosophy that might reconcile these two conflicting needs of a strong national defense and the intense moral imperative for peace and humility: "Speak softly, and carry a big stick." (Ironically, Theodore Roosevelt said this phrase, a saying he borrowed from Africa, in a speech he gave before he ever even became President, or ran for the presidency)

TR had his Great White Fleet and Ronald Reagan had his frighteningly large nuclear weapon arsenal. But in today's world we are globally connected and integrated, our economies and cultures are blending and blurring as perhaps never before. It is not the first time that our economy has been interdependent with the rest of the world, but it may be the first time that it is so easy for enemies to strike at our interests.

In such an age, how can the "happy medium" of speaking softly be balanced with the big stick? Could talking too softly be dangerous and ineffective at protecting America and her interests?

I read this today:

WASHINGTON, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Words of wisdom from an American leader: "The United States must be humble and must be proud and confident of our values but humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own course.

"If we are an arrogant nation, they'll view us that way but if we are a humble nation, they'll respect us."

President Barack Obama, the newly-minted winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, speaking about U.S. engagement with the rest of the world, including anti-American leaders? No, the exhortation for superpower humbleness came from George W. Bush when he was running for president in 2000. Whether this was campaign rhetoric or conviction will never be known but if it was the latter, it ended eight months into Bush's first term.

The word "humble" disappeared from Washington's political lexicon after the Sept. 11, 2001 mass murders in New York and Washington and during the rest of Bush's eight-year presidency, the United States came to be seen, in large parts of the world, as the epitome of superpower arrogance.

"Humble" is back in fashion. Nine months into his first term, Obama told the United Nations General Assembly he was "humbled by the responsibility that the American people have placed upon me" and determined to meet the challenge of collective action. Three weeks later, he stood in the White House Rose Garden to say he was "deeply humbled" by the Nobel Committee's decision to give him the Peace Prize.

But like his predecessor, who was resented in much of the world, Obama is running into foreign policy problems as resistant to humility and the collective action the president often conjures as they were resistant to Bush's unilateral approach. Does Obama's rock star-like celebrity help?

So far, not really. In Germany, for example, 93 percent of those polled in a survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project said they had confidence the U.S. president would do the right thing in world affairs. Would that translate into more German troops for the war in Afghanistan which is unpopular in Germany? Not likely.

In his speech to the United Nations, Obama pointed out that American unilateral actions had fed "an almost reflexive anti-Americanism, which too often has served as an excuse for collective inaction." While anti-Americanism may be on the wane in many parts of the world, there is no sign of a corresponding increase of support for U.S. foreign policy on key issues.

Nor is there evidence of a wholesale decline in the tendency of a good number of U.S. political figures to assume that people from other countries think like Americans. That has been a perennial problem in America's dealings with the world. It was the reason, for example, why the Bush administration was so surprised by the resounding 2006 electoral victory of Hamas, the Islamist group shunned as terrorists by most of the West, in Gaza.

CONTRADICTION IN TERMS?

More recently, that's why some in Washington were taken aback by the angry reaction in Pakistan to a bill passed in Congress this month that tripled U.S. assistance over the next five years. It was meant as part of an effort to build a new relationship with Pakistan, whose cooperation Washington needs to fight Taliban and al Qaeda elements along the border with Afghanistan.

The bill contained language on conditions tied to the tripled aid that were seen by many Pakistanis as a humiliating violation of national sovereignty and an affront to dignity, an issue particularly sensitive in Pakistan, which is one of the few countries apparently immune to Obama's charm. (The Pew survey's favorability rating for the United States showed a drop from 19 percent in 2008 to a dismal 16 percent in 2009).

What seemed perfectly legitimate to lawmakers in Washington -- no disbursement of aid unless Pakistan demonstrated a "sustained commitment" to crack down on terrorism -- was seen as an insult by the Pakistanis. Which raises the question whether a humble superpower is a contradiction in terms.

Or whether humility will impress the leaders Obama has to deal with if he wants to succeed where Bush and other presidents failed - get North Korea and Iran to drop their nuclear ambitions, persuade Israel and the Palestinians to end their conflict, defang international terrorists and last but not least, achieve his dream of a nuclear-free world.

On that, he sounded a somber note when he commented on his Nobel Peace Prize: maybe not "in my lifetime." Sobering detail: Obama is 48.

Nobel Peace Prize?

So I've thought about it all day, and I still can't figure out what in the world President Obama has done to earn the Nobel Peace Prize.

Michael Moore is an honest broker of documentary truth: True or False?

What if an advocate approached a topic sanely and presented their views without slander?

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/54833

Discuss.

Glenn Beck Clip

I got this link from Heather. It's from Glen Beck's radio show, and he's replaying an address from the former Secretary of Agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson.