2017: The Year in Preview

Opinion | thepilot.com

Once again, as everyone else looks back, this column looks forward. Therefore, here’s the Year in Preview:

JANUARY: Frustrated by their inability to secure A-list performers for the inauguration of Donald Trump, the inauguration committee is saved at the last minute when Vladimir Putin sends a delegation consisting of the remaining members of the Red Army Chorus, the Bolshoi Ballet, and pop groups Plazma and Code Red. “Is least Putin could do,” the Russian president announces over Twitter, “considering.”

FEBRUARY: Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton emerges from seclusion on Feb. 2, sees her shadow and retreats again, thus signaling that we will have at least six more weeks of winter.

MARCH: After the sudden and unexpected retirement of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, President Trump announces his nomination for her replacement: former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Palin immediately announces her support of overruling not only Roe v. Wade, but also New York Times v. Sullivan, Marbury vs. Madison, and Kramer v. Kramer. When reporters point out that the last one is actually a fictional 1979 movie starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep, Palin angrily tells them that “real Bible-readin’ gun-clingin’ Americans are tired of your coastal-elitin’ fake-newsin’ p.c. flibberdefloo, always talkin’ about your so-called Hollywood facts, you betcha.” Palin’s confirmation hearing is delayed as the Senate searches frantically for a translator.

APRIL: House Speaker Paul Ryan announces his plans for Medicare reform. Controversy ensues when it’s discovered that the bill mostly consists of funding to put the ailing elderly on ice floes in the Arctic and letting them drift away to die. Ryan defends the plan by saying, “The American people are tired of political correctness and want bold solutions to the Medicare crisis, so long as those solutions involve more tax cuts for wealthy people. This plan accomplishes that.”

MAY: President Trump announces that he’s canceling plans to put abolitionist heroine Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill. Instead, Trump promises a “big, beautiful new currency” with the face of his daughter Ivanka on the 20, sons Eric, Donald Junior and little Barron on the 5, 10 and 50 respectively, wife Melania on the 100, and daughter Tiffany on the quarter. The visage of Trump himself will be on the newly announced $3 bill. The motto on the back of the bills will be changed from “In God We Trust” to “Suck It Up, Buttercup.”

JUNE: Energy Secretary Rick Perry announces that the Department of Energy has been disbanded. “I’m not sure how it happened, but I showed up for work yesterday and it was gone. Yay me.” Later, it’s revealed that Perry had actually just forgotten where the department was and gone to the wrong building.

JULY: Speaker Ryan’s Medicare plan is derailed when scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are unable to locate any Arctic ice floes due to global warming. Congress responds by banning the use of the words “global warming” and any mention of “ice floes” in official documents before leaving town for their summer recess.

AUGUST: Unable to come up with a plan to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act that doesn’t cause 20 million Americans to lose insurance coverage, President Trump announces via Twitter that “Obamacare is gone. It’s called Trumpcare from now on. Problem solved. Trump = awesome!”

SEPTEMBER: Undaunted by the failure of his Medicare reform plan, Speaker Ryan unveils his plan to reform Medicaid in a bill titled “The Let the Poor Die Act of 2017.” Ryan responds to criticism with a terse statement: “Political correctness. Bold solutions. Tax cuts for the wealthy.”

OCTOBER: Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway is appointed head of a new government agency called “Department of Truth.” She issues a statement that “Obamacare never existed. Also, there were never any promises by President Trump to build a wall, lock up Hillary Clinton, or drain any swamp. Any and all evidence to the contrary is hereby declared ‘fake news’ from the ‘unfair liberal media’ and should be ignored.” Unprecedented Earth tremors in the area of Oxfordshire, England, are investigated by geologists and found to be the result of writer George Orwell spinning like a turbine in his grave.

NOVEMBER: Trump takes to Twitter to proclaim, “We should all give thanks that we can say ‘Happy Thanksgiving’ again. Go Trump!” Puzzled Americans note that we never stopped.

DECEMBER: In accordance with ancient prophecy, the Elder God Cthulhu arises from his resting place beneath the sea to begin his millennia-long reign of madness, chaos and violence. He takes one look at the world, goes “Dang, looks like you folks beat me to it,” and goes back to sleep beneath the waves.

Buckle up, buttercups. It’s gonna be another weird one.

Happy New Year!

Latte Is The New Teleprompter

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Once again, the shrieking outrage over a photograph of President Barack Obama saluting with a cup of coffee in his hand as he steps off Marine One reveals that there is nothing too small or trivial but that the American right won’t throw a giant hissy fit over it.

It’s all very amusing — until you realize what it says about the state of right-wing thinking.

By now, I’m sure you’ve seen the photo: President Obama, on his way to the U.N., stepping off the helicopter, flanked by saluting Marines on either side. He has his coat slung over one arm and is returning the salute with, horror of horrors, a cup in his hand.

Of course, the right-wing hysteria machine, apparently made up of people who have nothing better to do than comb through every photograph of the president looking for something to be apoplectic about, leapt immediately into action.

“How disrespectful was that?” Republican strategist Karl Rove asked. Half-Term Governor Sarah Palin mocked Obama’s lack of military service in a speech to a “Christian values” convention, a speech in which she also identified the president’s home address as “1400 Pennsylvania Avenue” — actually the address of a park next to the historic Willard Hotel. (It should be noted that neither Rove nor Palin served in the military.)

The National Republican Senatorial Committee even created a website — yes, an entire website — to protest.

Thing is, the president isn’t required to salute at all, and in this situation probably shouldn’t have. According to the regulations published by the Department of the Army (and available online), a salute isn’t required when “carrying articles with both hands” and “when either the senior or the subordinate is wearing civilian clothes.”

In addition, for 192 years of our nation’s history, presidents (including war heroes like Ulysses S. Grant, Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower) didn’t return the salute at all. The practice originally started with Ronald Reagan, who apparently ran around saluting everything in a uniform.

When a Marine aide let him know that that wasn’t standard protocol, Reagan went to the commandant of the Marine Corps, who told him, “You’re the [bad word] president. You can salute whoever you want.”

Of course, you can just imagine the howling that would have ensued if Obama hadn’t saluted at all. Or if, like the President Who Must Not Be Named, he was photographed, several times, saluting while holding his Scottish terrier in one hand. That’s different, we’re told by the Raging Right. Because — just because it is, OK?

So what next? Will Darell Issa convene hearings on “Latte-gate?” Will there be subpoenas demanding to know if the president took cream or sugar, and if so, was it an American brand? Will there be a breathless (and quickly debunked) expose on “60 Minutes”?

“Tonight on ‘60 Minutes,’ some guy you’ve never heard of who claims to have been a barista on Marine One has written a book in which he details his harrowing experiences on Sept. 23, 2014. He tells us how he would have heroically taken the cup from the president’s hand himself, but received a ‘stand down order’ for some reason we don’t know, but which we know is somehow Obama’s fault. I’m Lara Logan, and am as baffled as you are as to why I still have a job.”

More likely, “latte” will became the new “teleprompter”: a word wingnuts randomly drop into any conversation about the president in an attempt to craft a clever insult that only serves to point out how mindless and ill-informed the person delivering it actually is.

Example: “Wow, did you hear some guy jumped the fence and broke into the White House?” “Yeah, Obama was so surprised he nearly dropped his latte. Get it? Latte! HAW HAW HAW!”

It’s important, the wingnuts say, because it shows a pattern. They’re right, but not in the way they think. The real pattern is this: The right has certain narratives, certain themes they cling to. In this case, the theme is “Obama hates the military.” This is patently absurd, as anyone outside the right-wing anti-information bubble knows. But the truth doesn’t matter to these people. Any information that contradicts the narrative is rejected. Anything they come across, no matter how minor, is warped to fit the theme.

Fix the facts around the theory, instead of the other way around. Sound familiar? That’s the right-wing mindset that got us into the Iraq War. And that’s where it stops being amusing.

An Open Letter to Mr. Obama

 Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Dear Mr. President:

I heard recently that you plan to delay any executive action on immigration, such as delaying deportation of child refugees, until after the November elections — this in spite of your stated intention earlier to do something by the “end of the summer.”

I’m sure your advisers told you that this would be a smart political move. You may even believe it yourself. Well, they’re wrong, and so are you if you buy into that.

Oh, sure, it’s true that some of the more hotly contested races that could determine control of the Senate are in so-called “red” states. I know it looks like a bad idea to rile up the Republican “base” of xenophobes, bigots, Fox News-addicted outrage junkies, and various other angry, frightened old white dudes. My stars, taking executive action might even upset them enough to get to the polls to vote against Democrats.

But here’s the thing, Mr. President: They’re going to get riled up no matter what you do or don’t do. Riled up is their default state. They’ve been in a state of apoplectic rage since Nov. 4, 2008, when you sent the poster child for angry old white dudes and his empty-headed snowbilly running mate packing.

It only got worse four years later, when their supposed savior, Lord Mitt Romney, couldn’t get out of the way of his own feet and stumbled to a humiliating loss that everyone except them could see coming. All you have to do to upset the Republican base and get them to the polls is be a black Democrat in the White House.

You don’t believe me when I say that trying not to upset the Raging Right is a sucker’s game? Check out Newt Gingrich, who went on CNN’s “State of the Union” to call you “cowardly” and “indecisive” for delaying taking action on immigration.

Of course, no one on the program bothered to point out that on Aug. 3, Newt called such action “unconstitutional” and an example of “the Venezuelan-style, anything-I-want-is-legal presidency.”

Look at the House, where the speaker, John Boehner, urged you to act on immigration “without the need for congressional action,” the day after his caucus voted to sue you for acting without congressional action — to delay implementation of a law that they repeatedly voted to repeal.

You cannot placate these people. You cannot calm them down, especially since there’s a billion-dollar industry dedicated to keeping them angry and so afraid of everything that they’re convinced that they’ll be robbed, raped or killed if they don’t have a gun on them every time they leave the house.

Instead of trying to soothe the Republican base, why don’t you pay some attention to your own? You seem so worried at the prospect of right-wingers going to the polls that you’re forgetting the people you need to go there.

Latinos, of course, are the fastest growing demographic in the nation. You also need to get young people fired up. But what I’m hearing from them is a growing sense of frustration, complaints that “politicians are all the same,” and a general apathy about voting.

Dems will probably still get a goodly portion of the female vote, but that’s mainly because several Republicans will inevitably say something incredibly stupid, misogynistic, or patronizing toward women before it’s over. But we need the rest of the constituency, too. So now is not the time for half-measures.

I know, Mr. President, that you’re called “No Drama Obama.” But maybe it’s time for something dramatic. For starters, use the power you have as the executive to delay or defer the deportation of refugee children.

For all the caterwauling about “tyranny” (which, remember, they’re going to do anyway), that power falls squarely within the scope of what’s called “prosecutorial discretion”: the recognition that you simply don’t have unlimited resources to prosecute every law, all the time, so the executive branch can allocate those resources as it sees fit. Prosecutorial discretion has long been recognized by the courts as a legitimate use of executive power.

The Teahadists have threatened impeachment if you try that? Let ’em bring it. Lawsuits? Bring those on, too.

Iowa Rep. Steve King has raised the idea of another government shutdown in protest if you take executive action. Tell him, “Please proceed, Congressman.” Because if there’s one thing that will get wavering Democrats and independents off the couch and into the voting booths, it’ll be the spectacle of the wingnuts once again waving their torches and pitchforks and threatening to destroy the country in order to save it.

So do the right thing, Mr. President, and dare the Republicans to do something about it. Thank you, and God bless.

Boehner: PAY NO ATTENTION TO THOSE WINGNUTS BEHIND THE CURTAIN!

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Will the Republicans in the House actually impeach President Obama? I don’t know, but the recent furor over the question has provided us with the hilarious spectacle of one-half of the party trying desperately to keep people from noticing what the other half is doing.

Some Republicans, of course, have been muttering the “I” word since Mr. Obama’s election. The carping got louder when they found, to their shock, that they couldn’t beat him in 2012. Recently, the issue burst back onto the national conversation as the Queen of Wingnuttia herself, failed vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, wrote an inflammatory op-ed for the current flagship for right-wing lunacy, the website Breitbart.com.

“It’s time to impeach,” the Quitta From Wasilla said flatly. “Enough is enough of the years of abuse from this president. His unsecured border crisis is the last straw that makes the battered wife say, ‘No mas.’”

Well, I guess comparing not getting your political way to being an abused spouse is more classy than their usual complaint of being just like chattel slaves or Holocaust victims, but not by much.

Conservative pundit Smilin’ Bill Kristol, usually a Palin cheerleader, was unequivocal in his rejection of the whole idea of impeachment. He directly responded to Palin’s call on ABC’s “This Week” by flatly declaring, “No responsible elected official has called for impeachment.”

That one had to sting, because Kristol has always pushed Palin’s seriousness as a political voice. Of course, this means that impeachment is inevitable, because, as we all know, Bill Kristol is always, always wrong.

Orange John Boehner was even firmer in his denial, claiming that the “whole talk about impeachment” was a “scam” started by Democratic fundraisers to try to drum up contributions for the upcoming election. It’s all “coming from the president’s own staff and Democrats on Capitol Hill.”

This should come as a surprise to:

— Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who told Breitbart News Saturday, “From my standpoint, if the president [enacts more executive actions], we need to bring impeachment hearings immediately before the House of Representatives. That’s my position, and that’s my prediction.”

— Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who told a radio interviewer: “Not a day goes by when people don’t talk to us about impeachment. I don’t know what rises to that level yet, but I know that there’s a mounting frustration that a lot of people are getting to, and I think Congress is going to start looking at it very seriously.”

— Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.), who, according to another story on Breitbart.com, “told colleagues that the House should pass legislation with new steps to secure the border, and tell Obama if he didn’t implement it, they would impeach him.”

— Rep. Marilinda Garcia (R-N.H.), who said she’d vote for impeachment because, according to her, the president “has many, many impeachable offenses, it seems to me, in terms of his disregard for our Constitution alone.”

And of course, no parade of wingnuts would be complete without its grand marshal, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Bedlam), who stopped short of calling for immediate impeachment, then immediately claimed it’s “what the people want.”

“There isn’t a weekend that hasn’t gone by,” she said, “that someone says to me, ‘Michele, what in the world are you all waiting for in Congress? Why aren’t you impeaching the president?”

While it is highly likely that the “someone” she refers to is one of the voices buzzing in her head, she and her pals in the Teahadist Caucus seem awfully fixated on something that their alleged leader says is a Democratic idea.

Did all of these people (and a half-dozen other House Republicans who have either outright called for impeachment or who can’t stop talking about unspecified “impeachable offenses”) join the White House staff or cross the aisle to the Dem side when we weren’t looking?

John Boehner knows the lessons of history. He knows that the doomed impeachment effort against President Bill Clinton caused Clinton’s popularity ratings to skyrocket. He also knows that while impeachment is a big seller among Republicans, less than a third of the general electorate favors it, and 63 percent of independents flat out oppose it.

So, in a weak imitation of the Great and Powerful Oz, Orange John is bellowing for us to “pay no attention to those Republicans behind the curtain!” while pushing his own substitute: a lawsuit against President Obama’s delay in enacting a law the House has tried to repeal so many times I’ve lost count.

Sadly, Boehner is neither great nor powerful. His caucus is out of control and pushing not solutions to problems, but bogus lawsuits and political grandstanding. That’s what the Democrats are raising money to fight. They’re right to do so.

Truth or Parody?

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Lord, it’s hot out there. It’s hot enough to make a bishop cuss. Birds are pulling worms out of the ground using potholders. I saw a dog chasing a cat and they were both walking.

So, since it’s too hot to go outside, let’s stay inside and play a game. How about one of my favorite games: “Truth or Parody”? I’ll tell you an occurrence and you tell me if it actually happened, or if it’s satire.

Ready? Here we go:

1. A Republican congressman from Florida created a series of awkward moments during a congressional hearing when he warmly welcomed a pair of witnesses with brown skin and East Asian names by talking about how he wanted closer relations with their country and how fond he was of “Bollywood” movies (a genre of musical cinema made in India). Unfortunately, the witnesses were both Americans who are senior officials in the U.S. government.

2.  Ex-Alaska Gov. and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin recently unveiled an online subscription video service where her fans can pay $9.95 a month to watch messages from Palin and hear her commentaries on a variety of issues. Unfortunately, the launch of the service was spoiled by a glitch in which all of the videos quit halfway through playback.

3. Outgoing Minnesota Rep. and potential presidential candidate Michele Bachmann recently proposed solving the problem of unaccompanied immigrant children by creating labor camps, or as she called them, “Americanization facilities.” She said, “We’d get private-sector business leaders to locate to those facilities and give these children low-risk jobs to do. And they’d learn about the American way of life, earn their keep, and everyone wins in the end.”

4. An Arizona state legislator spoke out against national Common Core standards by claiming he’d heard they used “fuzzy math” that “substitutes letters for numbers at some points” — a description of algebra.

And now, the answers:

1.  True. Last Thursday, freshman Rep. Curt Clawson, despite having a list of witnesses to a congressional hearing before him, mistook Assistant Secretary of State Nisha Biswal and Assistant Secretary of Commerce Arun Kumar as representatives of the Indian government.

According to an article in Foreign Policy Magazine, “Although both Biswal and Kumar were introduced as U.S. officials by the chairman of the Asia and Pacific subcommittee, Clawson repeatedly asked them questions about ‘your country’ and ‘your government,’ in reference to the state of India.”

Clawson (the tea party candidate, naturally) later used a basketball metaphor, describing the incident as “throwing an air ball” on his part. I’d say it’s more like he came on the court and tackled one of his assistant coaches after unsuccessfully trying to throw him out at third.

2.  Half true. Sarah Palin’s new Internet subscription website is designed, in her words, to “go beyond the sound bites and cut through the media’s politically correct filter.” And, one suspects, avoid those pesky confrontations with reality that even the formerly fawning Fox News has been forcing on her.

But the part about the videos cutting off halfway through was my little joke. Given half-term governor Palin’s track record in regard to sticking with things, however, I wouldn’t spring for the long-term subscription.

3.  Parody. One that caught quite a few people, because when it comes to Congresswoman Crazy Eyes, no pronouncement seems too bizarre. This is, after all, the woman who recently said that the unaccompanied children flooding the U.S. Southern border came from “Yemen, Iran, Iraq and other terrorist nations,” and that they might be carrying “Ebola and other diseases like that,” even though there is not a shred of evidence for either claim.

4.  True. State Sen. Al Melvin, R-Tucson, told a Senate education committee that he was suspicious of Common Core standards because they’d been “hijacked by Washington.” Asked by another legislator if he’d actually seen the standards, Melvin said he’d been “exposed to them” and that there was “fuzzy math that substitutes letters for numbers.” For God’s sake, let’s not expose the poor man to calculus. Those Greek letters will blow his little mind.

A maxim developed on the Internet, known as Poe’s Law, states that “without a clear indication of the author’s intent, it is difficult or impossible to tell the difference between an expression of sincere extremism and a parody of extremism” (definition via Wikipedia).

Or, as I put it, “The hard part about satire is staying ahead of reality.” This difficulty is particularly pronounced when you’re dealing with the party of proud ignorance, manic xenophobia, and general craziness.

Enjoy your August!

The Long Con

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Two weeks ago, the right-wing faithful gathered for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). It’s an event where the princes and princesses of Wingnuttia appear to rally the troops, stir the fear, and crack open the wallets and pocketbooks of donors.

It’s kind of like a Burning Man Festival for right-wingers, except instead of weed and hallucinogens, the CPAC attendees are high on paranoia, resentment and belligerence, and the CPAC headliners are more than happy to give them their fix.

Soon-to-be-ex-Rep. Michele Bachmann, for instance, gave a radio interview from CPAC in which she claimed that the reason Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer recently vetoed Arizona’s “turn away the gays” bill was that gay people had “bullied” the American people.

Bachmann also suggested using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act to arrest people who “intimidate” billionaire donors to the Republican Party.

Yeah, Michele, it’s totally the straight people and the billionaires in this country being bullied. Why, I heard that just yesterday, a couple of gay people took Gov. Brewer’s lunch money and stuffed her in her locker, and I heard someone pantsed the Koch brothers in the lunchroom.

We’re so fortunate that we have people like Rep. Bachmann to speak for the oppressed, if by “oppressed” you mean “straight, extremely rich white people.” And by the way, Michele, if I was under investigation by the FBI for money laundering and wire fraud, as you are, I wouldn’t be bringing up RICO. It might give them ideas.

When it comes to spreading the fear, however, there’s no one to match NRA President Wayne LaPierre. In a thunderous speech on March 6, LaPierre delivered the kind of doom-laden paranoid rant once restricted to unwashed men on street corners wearing sandwich boards proclaiming that the end is nigh.

We need all the guns we can get our hands on, LaPierre said, because “we know, in the world that surrounds us, there are terrorists and there are home invaders, drug cartels, carjackers, knockout gamers and rapers, and haters and campus killers, and airport killers, shopping mall killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids, or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse our society that sustains us all.”

Wow. I’m sure glad I’m not him. Anyone who walks around this terrified all the time must be miserable. By the way, I’m not sure how a big stash of guns is supposed to help against “vicious waves of chemicals or disease,” but whatever.

No right-wing gathering would be complete, of course, without the appearance of the Quitta From Wassilla, half-term Gov. Sarah Palin.

And once again, Saint Sarah of the Snows did not disappoint. She delivered another parody of “Green Eggs and Ham” (“I do not like this kind of hope, and we won’t take it nope, nope, nope”) that was later revealed to be plagiarized from a chain email making the rounds two years ago.

She then proceeded to plagiarize from the NRA in suggesting a solution to the current crisis in Ukraine. “Mr. President,” she declaimed, “the only way to stop a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.”

Wait, what? Did the Resigning Woman seriously just suggest using nukes to get Russia out of the Crimea?

Naaah, at least not by any real definition of “serious.” Palin knows she’s never going to get within a mile of the nuclear button, just as Wayne LaPierre knows his collection of gold-plated AR-15’s isn’t going to defend us against “chemicals and disease,” and Michele Bachmann knows that billionaires aren’t really being intimidated.

They, and the other headliners at CPAC, are all part of the most massive and successful Long Con in the history of this country: the modern conservative movement. It’s all about filling their coffers with contributions from people in the freest, richest country in the world whom they’ve convinced that a Stalinist gulag is right around the corner and that their stuff is about to be looted from them any moment by Those People.

And it works. Palin’s own “Sarah PAC,” for example, raised and spent more than $1.2 million last year — only $10,000 of which went to actual candidates. The rest went for “operations,” including “consultant costs” and “travel expenses,” according to FEC campaign filings. Nice work if you can get it.

Whatever their original purpose, far right fear-a-paloozas like CPAC, and the conservative movement itself, have devolved into serving two purposes: lining the pockets of grifters like Sarah Palin and Wayne LaPierre, and reminding us why they should never be let near the levers of power.

In both those respects, CPAC was a resounding success.

A Little Word Salad For Thanksgiving From the Half-Term Half- Wit.

The Quitta From Wassilla weighs in on the change in filibuster rules, and the results are something to behold: 



In case you missed that, she said: 

“As for this rule change that some people are calling the nuclear option under Senate rules, you know, I guarantee, this week, Thanksgiving Dinner, people sitting around their tables were not going to be talking about the president blessing this thwarting of a balance of power in Congress with new Senate rules. People are going to be talking about our failed big government policies that will bankrupt this country. So, this distraction, this new talking point in the media and with Congress and with Senators and with the president blessing this action, it’s a distraction and it’s a lot of, you know, double standard and Democrat hypocrisy because just a few years ago they were so anti, anti-nuclear option. So, American people, they don’t care about distractions like that. They’re not in the inside baseball Senate rules stuff. They want government to be back on our side. They want it to get out of our lives… So, this new rule change, it stinks.”

The scary thing is, I've dealt with people like her in person and online. To her followers, she actually makes sense. They apparently actually think and talk in this kind of blizzard of disjointed gibberish,  spewing a veritable santorum of buzzwords: "Failed big government", "bankrupt this country"  "double standard", etc. As long as they hit the buzzwords and convey the proper sense of frustrated resentment. , it doesn't really matter to them what comes in between or whether or not the whole makes any sense. 

We may be headed for the post-linear-thinking society. 

Don't Leave Me This Way, Michele!

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I’m in mourning.

Seriously, I’m digging around in my sock drawer for the black armband I wore when Sarah Palin quit the governorship of Alaska after only half a term, because, you know, she found out that governing is really haaaaard, and people are meeeeean to you sometimes.

This time, the female Republican who’s broken my heart is Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Crazytown), who announced this past week that she’s not going to run again for the seat that God himself told her to use as a springboard to the Presidency (Fickle fellow, this God of hers. If my deity was this changeable, we might wake up some day to find that water ran uphill and that Nickelback isn’t a terrible band).

For a guy like me whose sometime profession is mocking the easily mockable, the loss of the Congresswoman with the Charlie Manson eyes is a crushing blow. So I feel like I have to address her directly.

Michele, ma belle, how could you do this to me? Don’t all the good times mean anything to you? Like the time you noted the “interesting coincidence” that swine flu broke out under two Democratic Presidents—Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama? And the way you got that totally wrong, since the first swine flu epidemic broke out under Republican Gerald Ford?

Remember the time you delivered the so-called “Tea Party Response” after the Republican response to the State of the Union address—and did the whole thing staring blankly off camera, as if you couldn’t look us in the eyes? Of course, it turned out, you were looking at a special live feed camera only the Teabaggers could see—which was also the camera with the teleprompter? Only you could create that level of hilarious irony, Michele.

I remember the time when you were the Republican Party’s latest ABR (Anyone But Romney). That was before you crashed and burned your own Presidential campaign by claiming that the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine created “dangerous consequences,” including mental retardation, because some unnamed woman outside a campaign rally told you it had.  I remember the times when you called upon your followers to be “armed and dangerous” to stop a cap-and trade bill and to “slit their wrists” to stop health care reform.

 I’d looked forward to a long and happy future making fun of you. And now you’ve gone and thrown all that away. It’s gone, all gone.

Why Michele, why? Why you got to do me like that?

Is it because of the investigations into illegal use ofcampaign funds (fueled by disgruntled staffers who you apparently didn’t pay)? Is it because your Democratic opponent has been making steady early gains in the polls against you, in a district you won by less than 5000 votes last time? Did the Republican leadership get to you? Did they whisper in your ear that “oh, the evil liberals will be pouring money in to defeat Your Right Wing Awesomeness, do this for the Good Of the Party” and tempt you with what every wingnut likes better than almost anything—playing the martyr?

Or maybe you think there’s a big payout in being a professional right winger on Fox News like Mike Huckabee, or as the head of some right wing “think tank” like Jim DeMint. Because as much as the wingnuts love to play the martyr, they like paying the martyr almost as much. I get that. I mean, you can’t live just off the farm subsidies and Medicaid provider payments you rail against even as your family benefits from them.

Well, whatever your motivation, we still have some time together, before you leave the Congressional stage. So, Michele, I’m begging you, baby, do this one thing for me. Make this your last hurrah. You’ve got nothing to lose. Whatever inhibitions you might have had, cast them aside and go full bat-spit right wing crazy.

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones recently claimed that the government had “weather machines” that President Obama used to cause the Oklahoma tornadoes. Honey, you can do better than that standing on your head. Claim that climate change is caused by Obama’s giant sun-reflecting orbital mirrors (funded by ACORN, of course, and administered by the IRS). Insist, on camera, that a woman outside a 7/11 in Duluth personally assured you that the new Playstation 4 and Xbox One have secret embedded mind-control software that compels users to blindly march into FEMA-controlled concentration camps and sign over all their property to gay illegal immigrants.  

Of course, these are just suggestions. I know you can bring the insanity like no one else, and give me column material on into 2014.

Do it, darlin’. Do it for me.