Category: US

I haven’t blogged much about US pol­i­tics in a while, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been fol­low­ing the farce that is the cur­rent debate about ‘Death Pan­els’, Obama’s birth cer­tifi­cate, Con­spir­a­cies about the sub­ver­sive art­work around Rock­e­feller Cen­ter and oth­er inani­ties.

I saw this on reddit.com, and would nor­mal­ly mere­ly link to it, but it’s so spot-on that I just had to include it here. Sure, it’s got some rude words and is a bit angry, but these days, so are a lot of us:

So, y’all remem­ber that email that went around years ago called “Things Only a Repub­li­can Could Believe”? I’m pret­ty sure there was a Demo­c­ra­t­ic vari­ant as well. Well, I’ve put togeth­er a new and updat­ed list and want­ed to run it by you. Please feel free to add to it or offer corrections\comments. If you like it — email it out to your spam­ming list. I’m hop­ing for a bit of a viral effect to get it cir­cu­lat­ing. Satire is an effec­tive weapon against crazi­ness!

I make no apolo­gies if you con­sid­er your­self a Repub­li­can. I am a reg­is­tered Inde­pen­dent and have vot­ed Repub­li­can at var­i­ous lev­els of gov­ern­ment, but the cur­rent crop of Repub­li­cans at the nation­al lev­el are off the reser­va­tion. To call them bat shit crazy would be an insult to bat shit.

• Par­ents who don’t want their chil­dren to pray in school are Anti-Amer­i­can zealots — par­ents who don’t want their chil­dren to lis­ten to a speech by the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States telling them to work hard and get good grades are noble patri­ots.
• Peace­ful­ly demon­strat­ing against the coun­try start­ing an inter­na­tion­al war is trea­son — show­ing up with auto­mat­ic weapons to protest health­care reform is democ­ra­cy at its finest.
• Any gov­ern­ment offi­cial with a desk job should have every action scru­ti­nized — any gov­ern­ment offi­cial with a badge and a gun should nev­er be ques­tioned or dis­re­spect­ed. At all. Ever.
• Ques­tion­ing the legit­i­ma­cy of an elec­tion because the “win­ner” was select­ed by the Supreme Court is sour grapes — ques­tion­ing the legit­i­ma­cy of an elec­tion because the win­ner (by the largest num­ber of votes in Amer­i­can his­to­ry) is real­ly a Kenyan born Mus­lim despite all evi­dence to the con­trary is being a vig­i­lant Amer­i­can.
• Lying about a blowjob is an impeach­able offense — lying about a war is no big deal, real­ly.
• Inves­ti­gat­ing a shady land deal involv­ing the First Lady is a mat­ter of Nation­al Iden­ti­ty — inves­ti­gat­ing the use of tor­ture at the direc­tion of the Exec­u­tive Branch is a par­ti­san witch hunt.
• Exe­cut­ing Japan­ese offi­cers for water­board­ing pris­on­ers dur­ing WWII shows that we have the moral high-ground on human rights — water­board­ing (our own) pris­on­ers of our shows that we have the moral high ground on human rights.
• Sit­ting two rows in front of Jane Fon­da in a 1970 anti-war ral­ly is an OUTRAGE!  Shak­ing Saddam’s hand in 1983…meh, not so much.
• Any­one who ques­tions the pres­i­dent dur­ing a time of war is giv­ing aide and com­fort to the ene­my and should be deported…unless the pres­i­dent in ques­tion has a (D) next to their name in which case you should under­mine them at every turn even if you have to rou­tine­ly make shit up to do it.
• Social­ism, Marx­ism, Com­mu­nism and Fas­cism are all inter­change­able words that mean pret­ty much the same thing.
• Any­one who abus­es drugs should be locked up indefinitely…unless they are a pop­u­lar Repub­li­can radio host in which case they need your prayers as they recov­er from the ill­ness of addic­tion.
• Health Insur­ance com­pa­nies have your best inter­ests in mind and any­one who thinks oth­er­wise is try­ing to turn Amer­i­ca into the God­less hea­then nation of Swe­den where every­one in the coun­try dies (even­tu­al­ly).
• Oba­ma is an athe­ist com­mu­nist mus­lim who attend­ed a rad­i­cal chris­t­ian church.
• Believ­ing that human activ­i­ty could impact the glob­al envi­ron­ment is crazy talk — believ­ing that an invis­i­ble man in the sky per­son­al­ly told George Bush to invade Iraq to ful­fill Bib­li­cal prophe­cy is log­i­cal­ly sound.
• The ver­dict is still out on evo­lu­tion — but Jesus Christ return­ing in our life­times is a pret­ty much a giv­en.
• The media are unques­tion­ably biased against Repub­li­cans — Talk Radio, The Wash­ing­ton Times, The Week­ly Stan­dard, The Wall Street Jour­nal, Rightwing Blogs, Fox News and News­Corp are not part of the media.
• The gov­ern­ment should have no part in reg­u­lat­ing multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions as they make deci­sions that impact the lives of mil­lions of peo­ple — gov­ern­ment should reg­u­late indi­vid­u­als by deter­min­ing who they can mar­ry, what kind of inter­course they can have, what they can smoke, how to man­age their preg­nan­cy and how to pro­ceed with end of life deci­sions.
• Com­mu­ni­cat­ing with hos­tile nations is a stab in the back to our great nation — Rea­gan com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the USSR dur­ing the Cold War was Polit­i­cal Genius.
• Iran is a mor­tal threat to our nation and any­one who attempts to talk to them is trai­tor­ous scum — sell­ing weapons to Iran and then fun­nel­ing the mon­ey to start wars in South Amer­i­ca is clear­ly in our Nation­al inter­est.
• George Bush kept the nation safe after 9–11 (NOTE: the Anthrax attacks, the DC Sniper and Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na don’t count. Also, the fact that 9–11 hap­pened on his watch despite receiv­ing a secu­ri­ty brief­ing specif­i­cal­ly warn­ing of the attack doesn’t count either.)
• Social Secu­ri­ty, Mei­d­care, pub­lic school­ing, pub­lic libraries, fire depart­ments, police depart­ments and the US Mil­i­tary are as Amer­i­can as Apple Pie — uni­ver­sal health­care is ZOMGDEATHPANELSOCIALISM!!
• George W Bush is a reg­u­lar ‘olé Texas ranch­er just like you and me despite the fact that he was born in Con­necti­cut, attend­ed two Ivy League schools, bought the Craw­ford ranch just before run­ning for pres­i­dent, sold it imme­di­ate after leav­ing office and is ter­ri­fied of hors­es.
• The two guys at the cen­ter of the Water­gate and Iran-Con­tra scan­dals are trust­wor­thy voic­es in dis­cus­sions of cur­rent nation­al pol­i­cy and should be tak­en at face-val­ue.

…and my addi­tion that I heard some time back on twit­ter and still quote to this day:

Fol­low up:
I loved this bit of video from MSNBC that sums up how I’m feel­ing about a great deal of Amer­i­ca these days:

Kei­th Olber­mann, the MSNBC pun­dit, and fre­quent spokesman for the US Left, kept me believ­ing that com­mon decen­cy had not com­plete­ly left our for­mer coun­try dur­ing the last admin­is­tra­tion. I still watch his show via an iTunes pod­cast, since we don’t get MSNBC here. I’ve kept watch­ing him, main­ly because I still want to keep in touch with what’s going on down there, and I have to admit that the results of yesterday’s Provin­cial elec­tion here have me a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed, espe­cial­ly since we can’t vote yet. (I’d say ‘Wait till next year’, but we’ll have to wait anoth­er 4 years to get our chance.)

Despite the fact that Olber­mann doesn’t have George W. Moron to kick around any more (and let’s face it, as James Carville said on Real Time with Bill Maher: “The man was a walk­ing punch-line.”), every once in a while he is able to mix his por­tion of out­rage with equal parts humour, and the result is price­less. Tonight, he was in rare form, and I just had to share:

He’s a genius…Genius, I tells ya’!