Exceptionalism by default, Harry Reid has big brass ones, Boehner tries to reign in his caucus, House Dems blowing it, The Mittstorm Cometh VIII – First Contact, Karl Rove – Illuminatus, and pot.
Welcome to the Daily Sausage.
First up, we have former Secretary of State and current Unindicted War Criminal Condoleezza Rice saying that the American people need to be reminded that the United States is “Exceptional”.
It’s not. Or, at least, it’s not an earned exceptionalism.
It’s impossible to write about our political process every day and look at this country as anything other than an utterly dysfunctional collection of parts shambling along through history, bound together purely by a shared geography and culture that is rapidly disintegrating as the differences between us all grow ever more magnified. One of our political parties is off the rails crazy and only interested in going backwards to a past that never existed, and the other is spineless and incompetent. The things that are going to matter in the next century the United States is woefully behind in. Europe and Asia are kicking our asses, and the only reason we’re still holding on to that #1 slot is because right now, no one has the balls to try and take it from us. But we’re like Rocky in the beginning of Rocky III. Success made us fat and lazy. We lost the Eye Of The Tiger, and all it’s gonna take is some hungry young nation like Canada, the UK, China, India, Brazil, or someone else to knock us on our ass to put us into full blown National Crisis Of Confidence Mode.
So, when Condoleezza Rice, who is as much responsible for our National Clusterfuck as anyone, says that the United States needs to be reminded that we’re “exceptional”, I, like Will McAvoy, have to ask what the fuck she’s talking about?
Next up, we have further analysis of yesterday’s Big Damn Tax Vote, in which Harry Reid demonstrated he has big brass ones by daring Mitch McConnell to beat him in a fair fight. I loathe the national Democratic party, because they’re right on the vast majority of the issues but can’t message worth a damn. This is in contrast to the national Republican party, whose messaging is excellent, but whose message is utterly toxic garbage.
Speaker of the House John Boehner is desperately trying to keep his caucus from doing something stupid before the elections like de-funding the PPACA or shutting down the Federal Government or whatever looney thing they’re trying to do now. My guess? He’s gonna lose. His party promised crazy a baby, and now they’re chained to a bed in a hotel room with a cooler full of Pop-Pop’s, well, “stuff”. But hey, there’s always money in the banana stand.
It should be an absolute cinch for Nancy “SMASH” Pelosi and her House cohorts to roll over Boehner and the big bag of mixed nuts he calls a caucus to retake the House. Representatives like Joe Walsh, Louie Gohmert, and Michele Bachmann should be so embarrassing to their districts that they should be shamed into replacing them. But, because the national Democratic party is spineless and incompetent, that’s probably not going to happen. This is why, even though I vote Democrat probably 90%+ of the time, I don’t register or identify as one.
And now, the latest installment of The Mittstorm Cometh VIII – First Contact.
Prospective Presidential candidates often take trips overseas to meet with foreign leaders to give themselves the optics and press of appearing “Presidential”. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, couldn’t even make it out of London without managing to fuck up, which makes one wonder if he’d be a worse President in terms of foreign relations than George W. Bush, who managed to squander tremendous international goodwill on two wars and some real bullshit.
Of course, if you ask the Romney campaign about their candidate’s inability to take two steps without stepping in political dogshit, they’ll tell you it doesn’t matter, because Americans don’t care about the foreign press.
I think that Carl Lewis has it right: “Seriously, some Americans just shouldn’t leave the country.”
Mittstorm Level 4 – Rarely is the question asked: is our politicians learning?
Next up, Karl “Shit Flower” Rove!
Karl Rove has assembled a pair of organizations that are expected to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat Democrats and the President this fall, thanks to a donor base that is largely anonymous, and will inevitably demand a return on their investment from a potential Romney administration and Congressional Republicans. This makes Karl Rove the head of a shadowy organization bent on world conquest. Unless I’m mistaken, that makes Karl Rove an Illuminatus, a member of the Illuminati. The Illuminati, for those of you unawares, is a supposed secret society of exceptionally wealthy and powerful individuals controlling the levers of the world’s governments and societies. The group itself is either mostly or entirely mythical, but it appears as though Karl Rove, in his infinite wisdom, is prepared to last together a great machine of the most wealthy and powerful people in America, and stage a coup to take over the US government by proxy. Good times!
Finally: pot!
Pot was made illegal because it was used by black Jazz musicians and counterculture types, which deeply upset white America at the time.
And now, here we are, many many years later, with the vast majority of our incarcerated population being black, and most of them in on drug charges. There’s real honest to god scientific evidence that says that pot is safer than either alcohol or tobacco, both of which are legal, and doesn’t have any of the brain melting effects of drugs like heroin, meth, LSD, cocaine, Ecstasy, etc.
The article makes a fundamental point: most of the members of Congress would probably vote for marijuana legalization if it were a secret ballot, but they’re terrified of the opposition party running ads against them for being soft on crime and enabling drug dealers.
Marijuana legalization, like gay marriage, is a historical inevitability. The Drug War has chewed up and spit out so much of our population, especially minorities, that there is enough of a groundswell now to make it a national issue. The only stumbling block left is if the states legalize it and manage to fuck it up through mismanagement. As long as one state can prove that marijuana can be legalized for recreational purposes collect taxes on it, and not have the Feds burn it all to the ground, it’s going to become much, much more prevalent an idea for increasingly cash-strapped states to consider.
