Mishugina

My political affiliation, my Grand Old Party, has gone mishugina. Every candidate for the Presidency is tipping the insanity scale on some level. Sarah Palin is sounding more and more normal and that’s an instant sign of insanity. Even the level headed Olympia Snowe has given up and gone home.

Like most anyone who is being honest, there are positions every candidate has I can agree with. Ron Paul wants to legalize marijuana, prostitution and gambling.  I’d bet that if these three were legalized and taxed by the IRS, President Obama would have a budget surplus during his last year in office. By the way, yes, Obama is going to win reelection because the Republican candidates are going to be confused with patients of Nurse Ratchet when we go to polls in November.

Getting back to Ron Paul, his suggestion for improving the education of our children is to eliminate the Department of Education. That’s like trying to improve voter turnout by eliminating elections. The only thing concerning education that was nuttier from this group of Republicans was when Rick Santorum said that public education was not present when our founding fathers wrote the Constitution. While Rick has personally said nuttier things, this one ranks right up there with the nuttiest of the election season. Mr. Santorum needs to pick up a history book that actually has history in it, not the writings of Mark Twain. The first “public” schools, where the community built a schoolhouse and hired a teacher to teach the kids in the town was created about 1700. Most of our founding fathers weren’t even born yet. By the time we declared our independence, public schoolhouses were ubiquitous.

What are some things Rick has said that are even nuttier? It is Rick Santorum who says we can’t separate our faith from our politics then turns around to tell President Obama he should. Santorum says the President is wrong for apologizing that we mistakenly burned several copies of the Koran. I wonder what the big Rick would think if the Afghans were burning a US flag. He tells us he wants public opinion to be tolerant of his religious issues with abortion, birth control and homosexuality while he is intolerant of the Muslim religion and atheists. Must be because his religion is the right religion, the correct religion, which even god has a laugh at. I know because mine is the one true religion. I talk to god regularly.

Then we come to Nuke Gingrich. Isn’t this the guy who thinks he’s on the Tea Party side of the sanctity of marriage but has left two wives - one on a sick bed - to marry other women?  Talk about “do as I say, not as I do”. Nuke….ummm….Newt, is the only Republican who has flip-flopped on the issues nearly as much as Mitt Romney. Gingrich claims to be a Reagan Republican which, like the big Gipper, must mean that he believes that trees pollute and that catsup is a vegetable. The only way I would vote for Nuke is if the remaining candidates were named Berkowitz, Manson and Koresh.

Finally, we get to the original two headed coin, Willard “Mitt” Romney. This guy is really amazing. He’s going to connect with the middle class of America by telling us that he’s been unemployed for years now. Also, that he likes being able to fire people that are servicing him. And that he drives two American made cars; his wife even drives a couple of Cadillacs. I’m sure the middle class will see their savior as a guy who thinks the average middle class income is only a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year. Romney bring a whole new meaning to oblivious.

I’m not happy with Obama either. I hope we hasten our exit from Afghanistan now that we're sorry for burning the Korans. I’m not sure what we have accomplished in that country, but after more than a decade, we’re not going to accomplish much more. Let’s not tell the Afghan government so they don’t tell ­Al-Qaeda, but let’s high tail it out of that country and go somewhere friendlier, like New Jersey. There is no good solution to choosing sides when comes to countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Syria. That’s like choosing which side of a baseball is your favorite.

At least Obama has made some decisions I agree with as President. He’s gotten rid of the silly Every Child Left Behind program. That's a program that being disastrous would have been an improvement. Truth be told, I think it was conceived by a committee of illiterates. Also, Obama was got rid of DADT only a couple of years into his first term. I suppose with the Congress he’s had to deal with, that is fast.  I know the Republican perception is that Obama is a flaming liberal socialist who wants to bring down the American way of life, but I don’t think he’ll be giving gay folks the rights married people have even during his second term. Let’s not confuse Obama with LBJ.

This election season, the Republican primaries have become an election caricature. How unreal can they get? Romney prepares to stand on top of the mountain of disbelief, but then some Not Romney comes along to find an even higher mountain. Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain (insert a 3 stooges joke here) all took their turns being the Not Romney. There are three Not Romney’s left named Nuke Gingrich, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Romney or Not Romney? Wow….should I cut my lego off or blow up my arm? There are never enough hours in the day.

I feel so alone. Sometimes I think I’m the only liberal Republican on the planet. Maybe I am, but I won’t give up. If I’m the last one standing, so be it. I won’t abandon my Republican Party. The nuttier they get, the more they need me!

We're a Democracy....Most of the Time

I am so tired of the 2012 race for the Presidency. Next week I hear they’re holding the Purina Underdog debate to discuss the economic policies of Bongo-Bongo. We are down to the final four Republicans and the Bongo-Bongo situation is a key factor for elect-ability. 

But who cares? This is about as exciting as watching a glacier race. I've learned nothing valuable. I already knew that Mitt Romney is rich beyond my wildest dream; that Nuke Gingrich just likes to go nuclear when he feels threatened; that Rick Santorum would be a great scout leader but I hope he stays away from elected office; and that Ron Paul would be great for the hookers, bookies and dealers - three of my biggest aspirations in my younger days - but his kind of less government means more headaches.

Obama and the Democrats have a definite advantage this election. Four years ago, both the Democrats and Republicans had primaries. Neither party had an advantage. Former President Junior was universally deplored by Republicans and Democrats alike. His policies led to two wars, an economic catastrophe of epic proportions, and a healthcare crisis unmatched since the black plague. Not to mention, Bush Jr. took a vacation every time it rained in the tropics and his VP shot a guy in the face. Apparently Dick Cheney mistook a guy's kisser for a quail. I remember when I used to mistake people for birds too, but to be honest, I quit the hard stuff a long time ago.

In 2004 we only had Democratic primaries. Bush Jr. was the president, going for re-election like Obama is today. The Democrats did a fairly awful job of nominating a person to head the top of their ticket then too, but to be honest, I can’t remember who it was. Was that Mondale, or maybe Dole? Right, Dole was a Republican. Oh well; it's not important.

I also remember the last time we had primaries in both parties in the same election season. That was during the Y2K Presidential Election. You remember that one. It was the one where the guy with the most votes didn't win.

I still don’t understand how the guy with the most votes doesn’t win the election. But it’s right there in the history books. The 2000 election was the fourth time the guy with the most votes wasn't awarded the big prize and made the President. I can understand the first three times. The first time, in 1824, the United States still had slavery; talk about a backward nation. The second time was in 1876,  shortly after the Civil War. The United States, for the most part, still didn't recognize black men, not to mention the entire Indian race, nor the contributions of women who were still not allowed to vote. The third time was in 1888, more than 30 years before women received the right to vote. Then all was right in democracyland until the Presidential Election of 2000. In that election women were allowed to vote. Progress is a beautiful thing.

Then, for the fourth time in our short 224 year history, the guy with the most votes didn't win the presidency. I'm trying to imagine how folks who believe they live in the greatest country on earth tell their children about the 2000 Presidential election. 

"Well, yes, Gore got more votes, by over half a million, but Bush Jr. won the election. That's what makes this nation great! Having the most votes doesn't necessarily mean you win." 

So the guy with the most votes doesn't win and no one says a word? It’s the 21^st Century, we have technology beyond our grandparents wildest dreams and still the guy with the most votes didn't get to live in the White House. I was hollering and screaming that the electoral thing needed to be changed but all I got was ho-hum; maybe next time. We've got other things to do. We can't be bothered with changing an elections process to make it fair. Who knows what's fair anyway. Do you think the guy with the most votes should win every time? Is that your idea of fair?

Yes! Every time! Just shows to go you.

George W. Bush Jr came in second but he got to live in the White House with his wife and the twins. We had the wisdom to have an 18^th Century electoral system still in place in the 21^st century; lucky us. On top of that, Bush Jr. was such a good president, a decade later we just finished with a war he created, we’re still fighting in a second war he created, struggling to come out of the recession that he created, and changing some of the more deplorable social policies that he created. Boy, that Obama sure screwed things up while Bush Jr. was president, didn’t he?

To be clear, I’m not a big Obama fan either. I’m not even a Democrat. I think Obama could have done a lot more during his first three years as President. Unfortunately, he was too busy trying to be nice to other side of the aisle. The Republicans were also too busy trying to figure out whether they should throw Obama out of office for not having a valid birth certificate, or for being a Muslim – as if that suddenly became a crime – or for being one of those edumacated Harvard types who can’t relate to the common moron. After all, we don’t want someone to be the President who is too smart. The educated elite have no place in politics and the Founding Father would have wanted no part of that. 

So why am I disappointed in Obama? To start with, he should have taken the Oath of Office that John Roberts was administering incorrectly, then immediately signed an executive order outlawing DADT. I understand he was planning for a full day. What with lunch, special Inaugural Dinners and all those  Inaugural Balls, his day was certainly full. But then he should have signed it right after breakfast the next day. That’s just the beginning of why I'm POed with Obama.

How about Guantanamo? Are they still torturing people out there? No? Really? And I'm supposed to believe that? So why isn't it closed already? Why don’t they put those folks on trial and throw the book at them? Why not keep them with the other murderers, rapists and child abusers we have in our prisons? How do we justify keeping people imprisoned when we can’t prove they have done anything wrong?

If we can’t convict the people we’re keeping in Guantanamo, we should let them go. We've already killed Bin Laden, Kaddafi, Saddam Hussein, and nine Somali Pirates, not to mention a few hundred thousand Iraqi and Afghan citizens. We need to let the Guantanamo prisoners go or charge them with crimes. There is no justification to keep them longer.

Why else am I disappointed in Obama? Well, how did the bank bailout work for you? Those banks got hundreds of billions of dollars - that billions with a B, which is nine zeros - along with General Motors and other companies, so they could remain solvent. And solvent they remained, so much so that within months they were giving many of their people bonuses. The same people who dug a big hole and flushed billions of dollars of middle class home equity into it, were getting bonuses. Where was the bailout for the millions of Americans who lost their jobs? Congress was kind enough to grudgingly extend their unemployment benefits.while the banks were foreclosing on their homes. What a great bailout for the middle class. Take that Willard Mitt Romney!

What is Obama doing about the war criminals in the former administration? No prosecution for war criminals but they’re still locking up people for having the audacity to grow marijuana. I guess we know where our priorities are.

Yeah, I’m already tired of the 2012 Presidential elections. We’re still months away from having the Republican nominee and Obama will be the Democrat. Also, candidates are still threatening to run independently. It’s all making my hair hurt and my teeth itch. I’ll vote. I vote in every election. But I  already know, it won’t make me feel good, especially if the guy with the most votes loses again!