Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Candidate with the Biggest Mouth or Most Bizarre Message Wins

In the run up to the this year’s mid-term elections we’ve seen some of the most bizarre behavior and comments coming out of the candidates, especially those who claim to be ordinary Americans wanting to take America back. Come time to vote, unfortunately, those people stand to win and win big.

It’s not because of any message of hope they bring to an America that is hobbling around on a bum economy, but more because of who they are, what they believe in and how they get their message across or, in some cases, refuse to go on bona fide news shows to get their message across but rely instead on Twitter, Facebook, and the witticisms they pen in the front covers of their best-selling books.

We’ve finally tipped the scales in favor of the loonies. You have only to listen to things they’ve said prior to running as well as what they are saying on the campaign trail to determine there are some certifiable, unqualified whack jobs that may just be headed to Washington this fall.

To help voters out, here are a few tips that the candidate you’ve decided to vote for may not have all their absentee ballots in the same box:

1.       They are confronted with video clearly showing them bragging about dabbling in witchcraft and then explain it away as high school hijinx. Ok, we get it, but to be clear about it, we’d probably draw the line at eating an egg salad sandwich and some chips on a blood-spattered altar.

2.       They don’t just embrace the second amendment, they use witty double entendres to get their message across such as “she has your best interests in her sights,” and “she’ll target lower taxes for everyone.” But when she’s shooting a rapid-fire machine gun and telling potential voters “when it comes time to cast your vote, make the right choice,” that’s where you hope she doesn’t know how you voted or where you live.

3.       They like to choose who they sit beside at the lunch counter, and they don’t believe their speaking out against certain things such as silly old Civil Rights laws and their onus on business owners should be taken as anything other than pandering to corporate interests. That blue-plate special is gonna come at a mighty high price.

4.       When they want to espouse family values, and they don’t really have any to speak of, they generally just use someone else’s kids. Can you blame them? It is a well-known fact that kids, puppies and kittens sell. Wonder if the Humane Society is next on his list for purchasing a bit of surrogate heartstring tugging?

5.       When all is lost, they call for the dismantling of every governmental program that is actually doing something to better the quality of life of Americans like Social Security, Medicare and even the EPA. Sure, having a retired husband whose benefits extend not only to himself but also allows her to receive some of the best health insurance in the country thanks to the still working civil servants in this country paying into the (federal) Civil Servant Retirement System. Betcha even she is hoping she doesn’t get elected and have to make good on her promise to vote on doing away with those plans.

6.       They are great at running without giving any interviews. Oh, some will show up on Fox News, or the occasional local news station, but put them in front of someone who can actually ask informed questions and they act as if they’ve just been exposed to kryptonite. Unless, of course, you just happen to become a candidate with absolutely no explanation as to how you are unemployed but still come up with over $10,000 in filing fees to run for US Senate. The interviews, although few and far between, are a great comical diversion. What isn’t funny about the whole thing is that another fundamentalist Christian candidate who is hell bent on taking Obama down will most likely get that Senate seat due merely to the fact that there really is no contest.
7.       While some aren’t going to Washington, it doesn’t make them any more scary. Bada Bing, Bada Boom pretty well says it all. For those of you who aren’t from NY this phrase was popularized by James Caan in the movie “The Godfather,” and loosely translates to easily gotten and that’s what one candidate running for Governor of NY is hoping for in the upcoming elections. Fuhgetabout the fact that he is openly racist until, of course, it hurts his chances for election. Oh and lest we forget, he is pro-life and pro-gun, if that is at all possible.

While this list is by no means exhaustive, i.e. the dozens of candidates who use dead presidents, guns and demonic sheep to get their messages across, it is a pretty good sampling of who we can expect to be making our laws come November and if that doesn’t scare you, then go ahead and vote for them. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Christine O'Donnell Not Happy About Fielding Witch Jokes

When Christine O’Donnell of Delaware won the election to run for a United States Senate seat on the GOP ticket, she was all smiles, but it didn’t take long for the bones in her closet to start rattling. The biggest bone rattler of all turned out to be a very savvy Bill Maher, who just happens to be sitting on a gold mine of old Chris O’Donnell tapes from his old television show, “Politically Incorrect.” Maher has threatened O’Donnell that if she doesn’t accept his offer to appear on his new show “Real Time with Bill Maher,” he’s will release a video a week up until the election in November.

And just like the kidnapper who lops off his victim’s ear and sends it to the family for ransom money, Maher is quite serious. Last week, he released the first of more than 20 archived videos where a young O’Donnell admits she dabbled in witchcraft. This airing has not only hit mainstream media with a vengeance, but some pundits agree that it has spawned some of the best political jokes since those told back in the George Bush/Dan Quayle and Clinton/Lewinsky eras.

For instance, did you hear the rumor that an unauthorized biography is due out this week called “Christine O’Donnell—My Life, Warts and All?” Then there’s the one about how she hopes she never becomes as popular as President Obama. Why you ask? She hears the roasts can be brutal.

But it’s not all about witches. O’Donnell’s strict Christian beliefs have caused her to say a lot of things that have brought the proverbial shtick ball down on her head. For instance, O’Donnell has made it perfectly clear that she is totally against masturbation. Quipped one comedian, “There goes the male vote.”

So far, Bill Maher has already broken his promise of releasing one video per week by prematurely releasing another vintage video where Christine O’Donnell takes up the issue of telling lies and makes known her belief that telling lies in any situation is wrong. If this is true, O’Donnell is going to have to make a decision, stay true to her beliefs or forget about being a Senator.

Monday, September 20, 2010

GOP Considers Palin and Tea Party a Necessary Evil

While conservative pundits continue to say that Republicans are none too pleased about some of the crazy Tea Party candidates who have gotten themselves nominated for Republican House and Senate seats this year, they still have to admit that without them, the party doesn’t stand a chance in hell of taking back control of Congress.

The proof is in the way we are seeing staunch old school Republicans such as Karl Rove practically getting down on all fours and licking Sarah Palin’s Manolo Blahniks for handing them a Republican Congress in November. Rove can only imagine the Tea Party as a third party, instead of the red-headed stepchild of the GOP, and he shivers.

Talk about the Tea Party becoming a third political party is tempting only for the Tea Partiers themselves, not for the Republicans. Trying to keep Palin happy so she won’t take her influence and let that very thing happen is taking its toll on staunch Republicans like Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Karl Rove and others. You can see it in their body language when forced to share a stage with Palin, smiling through clenched teeth, nostrils flaring, fake cordials.

If you believe that Sarah Palin, herself is capable of getting the Republican Party to lick her boots, you overestimate her power. She is being driven by someone else’s money and quest for power. Someone who knows that the Tea Partiers need the Conservatives just as much as the Conservatives need the Tea Partiers. A break into two parties would mean a split in votes and the real possibility of the Democrats coming out on top.

To understand this a little better, one has only to look at what happened in the 2000 Presidential elections. It was George W. Bush taking on Vice President Al Gore and, say what you will, Gore was expected to win the election on the popular vote. In fact, Gore actually was elected President according to the popular vote. Some say that Ralph Nader, who ran on the Green Party ticket, took valuable votes away from Al Gore and cost him the election. While Nader vehemently denies this, the fact of the matter is many believe that is exactly what happened. And that is what could happen if the Tea Party were to splinter off into a third party.

Fast forward to 2010 mid-term elections. There are two parties—the Democrats and the Republicans. There is no third party, at least none that has candidates running in the election that could pull votes away from the Republican or Democrat parties. While the Tea Party movement members do have a tendency to lean toward conservative beliefs, they are not happy with the conservative agenda. They hate the thought of big business influencing Washington politics almost as much as they hate government running their lives. They don’t want to pay taxes but at the same time, they don’t want corporations to get a tax break while they suffer.

The Tea Party movements has its own agenda and it does not line up well with that of the Republicans. If they were a third party in the election coming up and their candidates were running against Republicans, it is a distinct possibility that Democrats would win the elections because Tea Party members would vote for their own candidates and there wouldn’t be enough votes to carry and election. By voting for their candidates, they’d pull votes away from the Republican candidates, making it difficult for them to get a majority vote as well. And certainly, Republicans would not be voting for the whackos running on the Tea Party ticket.
Makes one wonder if the Tea Partiers plan on ever really breaking away from the Conservatives and forming their own party. If they were running the show, it might have already happened. But the moment they teamed up with Sarah Palin and the money behind Sarah Palin, the game plan changed and the poor folks who signed on to the Tea Party Express were gobbled up by the very people whom they are fighting so hard against—big business.


For now, the Republicans consider the Tea Party a necessary evil and are going along with their far right agenda to ensure success in November. But after the elections, it may be the Tea Party that begins to shed their Republican skins kind of like the lizard people on the hit mini-series “V” years ago and if that happens, it’s anyone’s guess what kind of election year 2012 will be. One thing is for sure, any Democrat worth their salt will be cheering the Tea Party on.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Wealthiest Americans Expected to Seek Asylum with Lakota Nation

Three years ago a delegation of four Oglala Sioux Tribe members took their Declaration of Sovereignty to Washington, D.C. declaring themselves a separate nation. While the declaration has not been formally accepted by the United States State Department, the newly formed Lakota Nation is determined to go forward with plans to have their nation recognized by the United Nations. Meetings with various heads of state from such countries as Venezuela and Bolivia have been met with respect and solidarity.

The Nation comprised of parts of 5 states including South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska and Montana is offering citizenship to anyone who wants it so long as they are willing to renounce their United States citizenship. The most coveted prize of becoming a Lakota Nation citizen is tax-exempt status. The same thing the Tea Party is fighting for but will never be able to fully attain.

At present, any United States citizen who fights the Federal Government over their right to withhold paying taxes is subject to fines, penalties and jail time. But, not if you become a Lakota Nation citizen. You are automatically exempt from paying taxes.

Unfortunately, the top 1% of the nation’s citizens, those with the most wealth, and the very people who could care less about the plight of the Indians are the ones seeking to defect to the Lakota Nation if the Democrats continue to hold a majority in the House and Senate. This has presented the Lakota Nation with some hard choices to make. On the one hand, they stand to gain some of the greatest minds in the business world to bring them into the future. On the other hand, some of the lowest forms of human beings on the planet, predatory lenders, unscrupulous employers, narcissists, and sociopaths will become citizens alongside the nature abiding original peoples.

What do do? What to do?

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Awesome! Ed Schultz and Stephen Colbert in Political Rally to Set the Record Straight

On rare occasions, I come across a story that rivals mine in intelligence and wit and that has a message that needs to reach my readers. This is such a story. I cannot stress enough the need for all liberals and progressives to step up to the plate. Join in rallies, get the word out, and by all means, make sure you are registered to vote and do so on election day. This is one very, very important election and we cannot let the opportunity pass without giving our voice to the issues that make us who we are as citizens.

When you read the story in the attached link, try and imagine a dual rally combining the talents of MSNBC's Ed Schultz with Stephen Colbert. That would be the stuff great rallies are made of. Do what you can to help this cause along. Join the forums for both The Colbert Report and The Ed Show and help make this a reality. It's in your hands now.

Crawling down off my soap box now. Thanks for listening.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

A Progressive Hippie’s Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, there was a large hippie clan living in a remote area of the Appalachian Mountains. They had been living a quiet life out of mainstream America since the early 70’s. They dropped out of society during the Nixon administration fully expecting to re-integrate back in when Nixon left office, but decided their lifestyle was one that could not be abandoned so easily.

Numbering in the tens of thousands, the group kept abreast of current events through a live news feed to the main meeting center; however, none of the individual dwellings were wired for radio or television. It is for this reason that this particular group of people were the purest of liberals. They actually practiced tree hugging, organic farming and homeopathic medicine. They shunned the modern world as we know it, save for one lone member who possessed an Apple iPad, asking that he not be identified.

One day, a hiker by the name of Corkie Simpson, one of Nancy Pelosi’s congressional aides, was hiking with friends on the Appalachian Trail. They came upon a few members of the clan who were out early in the morning harvesting mushrooms. The clan members were not able to escape quickly enough into the forest and were detained by the hikers. A friendly conversation ensued and the clan members agreed to sit down with the hikers over lunch and discuss the dire straits the liberals were in going into the mid-term elections.

The clan leaders felt a sense of urgency in what Simpson told them of how, if the liberals didn’t pull something out of their hats, were sure to lose the elections come November, and in the process, put America back at risk of becoming a true plutocracy. At first, the clan members shied away claiming that from what they’d heard, the liberals had their chance and they blew it, but Simpson was adamant that was just not so. She asked the clan leaders if they’d ever heard Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin speak, and they admitted they did not. The clan only listened to Amy Goodman on National Public Radio. Simpson invited the clan members to sit down in front of their one television and turn on the Fox News Channel, which they did.

As they shared homemade chicory coffee and blueberry buckle in front of the television, the clan members were warned that what they were about to watch may be gruesome but it was for their own good. They all began to watch the Glenn Beck Show together. Some clan members ran from the room unable to keep their lunch down; the message was so horrific. Others got angry, something they’d not done for decades. By the end of the broadcast, there was no doubt that the clan members had only one course of action—re-register to vote and vote democrat all the way.

Little did Sammy Simpson know, but this particular clan had satellite clans all over the United States that had lain dormant since the early 1970’s. Upon departing, Simpson secured the promise of the clan leaders that they would immediately call on their brothers and sisters throughout the land to rise up and vote just this once more to preserve and protect the middle class of America. Corkie then performed what everyone thought to be the height of an unselfish act, she left her cell phone with the leader of the clan so that he could call on all brothers and sisters in states all across the country to come out in numbers on Election Day. The clan asked for nothing in return.

While Pelosi’s very position as House Speaker lay in jeopardy, the reality of what these fine anti-establishmentarians were willing to sacrifice to counter the damage that may ultimately be done by the right fringe wingnuts is the kind of commitment this country has not seen for a long, long time. They only asked in the end that if they were willing to make such a sacrifice to come out of self-imposed exile to help out their fellow liberals, that progressives and liberals on the outside, the ones who are sitting idly by and letting someone else fight their battles for them, rise up alongside and make this truly an election to be proud of.

This fairy tale does not yet have an ending but it does have a moral. Stop your whining, and get out there and vote because if you do not, you have no one to blame but yourselves. And maybe, just maybe, we can amend this story to have a happy ending.

The end.

Friday, September 10, 2010

CDC Warns of New Strain of Flu Virus this Fall Related to Elephants

The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta (CDC) has come out with warnings this week of a new strain of flu that is already showing signs of being a real problem this coming fall flu season. The reports claim the flu is related to elephants. Unlike the swine flu and avian flu viruses, which can affect anyone regardless of their socio-economic status, the pachyderm flu will be particularly bothersome in the upper echelons of society.

There is good news for the less wealthy in the country in that they are not expected to be affected by the flu due to the fact that, as a whole, wealthier members of society rarely have contact with the middle or lower classes of society. Therefore, the threat of spreading pachyderm flu to a broad number of people is near impossible.

While swine flu and avian flu are thought to spread mainly through hand-to-mouth contact, pachyderm flu spreads a bit differently—through the rapid exchange of money. Wealthier citizens are therefore warned to wash their hands thoroughly before and after making back-room political deals and any other instances where large amounts of money change hands in a quick and unthinking fashion. Rubbing elbows is also a form of contact, but a less likely way to spread the disease.

The height of pachyderm flu season is expected to be around the second week in November. Therefore, it is important to avoid anything that may have to do with elephants at this time. Further reports on this troublesome but as of yet, non-deadly form of disease are expected through the coming months.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Glenn Beck Creates New Religion “Mormonistianity”

Coming off the self-proclaimed super success of his Restoring Honor Rally in Washington, D.C., Glenn Beck has had an epiphany of sorts. In fact, he believes that his particular belief system is different enough and believable enough to catch on with the majority of Christians who are tired of being lied to.

Those close to him claim that Beck believes so much in his beliefs that he has created a whole new belief system, or religion if you will, which he has called Mormonistianity. In an effort to try and explain his new-found, newly branded religion, Beck told his radio listening audience this “If anyone is confused about what to believe, it is this little buckaroo. Believe you me, I have been searching for a belief system practically all my life. First of all, I was raised in the Roman Catholic faith, but kind of lost my way. When I found my way, it turns out I felt I had been on the wrong road and took the first right over onto Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Avenue smack dab in the middle of Mormontown.”

Yes, as usual, Beck was unable to actually coherently explain his early worship years. However, when he began to speak of his new belief system, Mormonistianity, a spark ignited and he was once again able to speak semi-eloquently about what he hopes to accomplish with his new religion. “Well, first and foremost, let’s get one thing clear, in order for a new religion to survive, it needs a central place of worship, or as I like to call it blind faith fellowship.” Beck then walked over to his chalkboard not realizing his radio listeners couldn’t see what he was doing, and began to scribble stuff on it.

“And so,” said Beck, “as you can see from what I’ve written on this blackboard, it will take $213 million dollars to build the Mormonistianity Temple of Fellowship in my home town of New Canaan, and I’m asking all of you to not only dig deep into your pockets to give to this brand new  religion I’ve concocted, but to also put down your bibles in order to free up your time to read my new book ‘Beck’s Blue Blazes Bibliography, the Teachings of Mormonistianity.’ It’s in bookstores and online now.”