A Brief History of Stupid

Sometimes I feel like other countries wouldn't believe us if we tried to tell them how stupid our government is.  Let's pretend that you, dear reader, are Germany for a minute.  You don't want to be Germany?  A little too aggressive for you?  OK, France then.  No?  A little too surrendery?  OK let's say Australia.  Everyone likes Australia.

Hey Australia, you'll never guess what happened.  In the summer of 2011, our government reached our debt limit (again, this happens constantly now).  That's stupid thing numero uno, by the way.  Why would we work under a self-imposed debt limit?  I can understand trying it once to see if it actually helps us be more fiscally responsible, but that doesn't really seem to be working, does it?  Now it's just an arbitrary number that we have to raise every once in a while so we don't default on our debt.  Except when the President is black, then we have to fight about it first.

So we reached our debt limit and then, because Republicans don't actually understand how debt works, they demanded that spending cuts accompany any deal to raise the debt ceiling.  Actually, it may be that Republicans don't understand how time works, because they seem to be missing the part where cutting future spending won't really help with the debt we owe for past spending.  To be fair, time is pretty complicated and Republicans hate science, so, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

The Democrats though, they don't want to cut spending.  They say they do, because it sounds good and it's always good politics to be for general spending cuts, but they don't really want to.  They don't want to cut social programs because they, ya know, believe in those things.  And they don't want to cut defense because if they do someone will call them weak and they'll lose an election and have to get a real job.

And don't tell me about how the President has offered $2, or $2.50 or whatever of spending cuts for every dollar of revenue.  I'll give you two and a half unicorns for every one of your horses.  What unicorns?  Don't worry, I've got unicorns.  And I've got traumatized workers who helped me make half unicorns.  You can have the workers for free.  They mostly just sit and cry now.

And the Republicans, they do want to cut spending, except not really.  Republicans don't want to cut defense spending, because if we don't have at least a million times more tanks than every other country in the world then we're all going to die.  And they don't really want to cut social security or medicare either.  They say they do, but they know if they actually did the very old people who vote for them would march on Washington...slowly.  That's why Mitt Romney's plan was to start cutting entitlements ten years from now, two years after it conveniently wouldn't have been his problem anymore.  I wonder if the 2023 Congress would have actually gone ahead with Mitt's plan.  I'm thinking no.

So everybody really wanted to cut spending, except that nobody actually wanted to cut spending.  Then they came up with a big, fool-proof plan to cut spending.  It was called...drumroll...the sequester (ohhhhh).  They came up with all the worst spending cuts they could think of and put them all into one big package of cuts that would take effect at the beginning of 2013 unless some people could, somehow, reach a deal on spending cuts that everyone would like better. 

I guess I should talk about why this particular move was so insanely stupid, but I feel like I really shouldn't have to explain to you why an economic suicide pact is a bad idea for our government.

But who would work together to reach such a deal?  Well, get ready for another stupid thing.  Instead of trying something innovative or smart, they just put together a smaller group made up of people from the bigger group that already couldn't agree on anything.  Even though this was a super smart plan, and even though they were called the Super Committee (ohhhhh again), they somehow failed to agree on anything. 

"Then what happened?"  Good question, Australia.  Well, then they all forgot about it and went to run for office for a year.  It was another excellent plan.  I mean, who has time to worry about the impending economic disaster when the gays are still trying to marry each other and Mitt Romney is being mean to poor people?  Not me, and not any of the people who are paid to worry about stuff like that either.

After the election was over and everyone had a good cry, they all suddenly realized they hadn't bothered doing their jobs for a year and this sequester thing was still happening.  "Ohh noooos!" said John Boehner.  They had until the end of December to reach a deal, but they had a much better and much stupider idea.  Instead of actually doing something, they just raised some taxes that never should have been lowered in the first place and then put everything else off for two months. 

Then, and I swear this happened, they sort of forgot about it again for like a month while the Republicans spent time bitching about Benghazi and the Democrats ran around talking about raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires even though they had literally just done that shit.

By the way, I'm not saying taxes couldn't be higher, because they absolutely could and should be.  I'm saying Democrats spent a year whining about how all they were asking for was a return to the Clinton era tax rates, and as soon as they got it, without even blinking, they immediately started acting like it never happened.

Then everyone remembered the impending crisis that they had just created, and then they fought about it without agreeing on anything until finally it was March 1st.  This is where the President overplayed his hand a little.  The White House spent a week making it sound like the sequester was the end of the economic world, when everyone knew it really wasn't.  I heard people on TV talking about how long airport lines would have people immediately demanding a budget deal.  Really?  You know who doesn't give a shit about airport lines?  Everybody who isn't at the fucking airport right now.  And screw those people anyway.  I don't have time to fly around the country all willy nilly, let them wait on line.

Meanwhile, all this economic crisising left Congress with no time to deal with things like gun control and infrastructure and immigration.  Oh man!  They really wanted to do those things too, there's just no time.  If only there was time!

And so here we are.  Minimal spending cuts that won't really help that much with deficit reduction in the long run, done the stupidest way possible, which is to say the government basically closed their eyes and threw darts at the discretionary budget while telling themselves that none of those cuts were actually going to happen so don't worry about where the darts are landing.  At least now that we have this problem, our leaders are working tirelessly to fix it instead of just trying to go on TV and blame each other.  Oh wait.  Nevermind.

Undecided

I was talking to a friend Saturday night and she made me realize that I am, in fact, an undecided voter.  If I lived in a swing state, I would vote for Barack Obama, because Mitt Romney is just awful.  But I live in Massachusetts.  Unless Mitt Romney has a photograph of Barack Obama pooping on Ted Williams' grave while wearing a Lakers jersey, Massachusetts is safe for the President.

I like the President, but I don't like everything he's done.  More importantly, I don't like that I only get two real choices.  Two choices that aren't as different as they and the media would have me believe.  Is Barack Obama a better President than Mitt Romney ever could be?  Of course he is.  But that doesn't make him the best possible President.  On the contrary, it could easily just make him the 2nd worst possible President.

So I'm torn.  Use my meaningless vote to cast one more drop into the ocean of Massachusetts Obama votes, or use it to at least make a point about third party candidates.  I'm looking at you Gary Johnson.  I don't know, I honestly don't think I'll decide until tomorrow when I get there.

Speaking of undecided voters, on the eve of Election Day (honestly one of my favorite days), I thought it would be fun to try and sum up some of the last minute campaign issues for anyone who's still mulling it over.

Senate Races

Senate races have become important nationally because the first rule of Republican Misogyny Club is you don't talk about Republican Misogyny Club, but Todd Akin and that Mourdock clown from Indiana didn't get the memo.  More than any other recent election, Republicans are making it clear to everyone that they think women should be second class citizens who have their rights dictated to them.  Even Mitt Romney tipped his hand a little.  I mean, he's OK if you ladies want to work a little, he thinks it's cute, but once 5PM rolls around, your ass better be in Mitt's kitchen making him a delicious dinner.  That beef isn't going to roast itself, and your lady work can wait until morning, we don't give you anything important to do anyway.

I have an idea for Republicans.  You obviously have no interest in growing up or moving into the current century, so how about this?  Whenever the word rape comes up at one of your press conferences, just walk away.  In fact, whenever anybody asks you anything about women, just slowly back away from the microphone.  It isn't the best strategy, but I think it's the best you can do based on your policies and beliefs and, honestly, it's better than your current strategy of looking like idiots all the time.

Speaking of Senate races, this is where reasonable Republicans really need to look at their own party and get angry.  Republicans have pissed away at least three easy wins in the Senate by nominating awful candidates.  Linda McMahon in Connecticut may not be anyone's fault, and maybe they couldn't have won that seat anyway, but Missouri and Indiana were easy Republican wins for even halfway decent candidates.  Democrats have the tea party to thank for keeping control of the Senate, plain and simple.

I disagree with Republicans a lot, but I understand we need at least two functioning parties for our system to work.  Please Republicans, chase these tea idiots back into whatever caves they crawled out of four years ago, they are killing your party.

Chris Christie

I may have made fun of Chris Christie once or twice, or almost every time he's opened his mouth in front of a camera, but let me tell you why independent voters like him.  Most normal people understand that you can't expect a political party or a candidate to agree with you on everything.  All I want is for politicians to tell the truth about what they believe so I know who to vote for.

I still think Chris Christie is mostly a bully and a dumbass, but I like that he's at least honest.  It's sad that I know that's all it takes to make him one of the most respectable politicians in the country right now, but here we are.

Benghazi

You know this pisses me off, but Fox won't stop talking about it so here we go.  I have a vague recollection of something like 3,000 Americans dying all at once in a terrorist attack the last time a Republican was in the White House.  I could swear I was supposed to never forget that.  I could also swear that it took years for us to find out what actually happened and that the Bush administration had good intelligence that could have prevented it more than a month in advance.

I remember these things, just a little, but I don't remember it being an issue in the 2004 campaign.  Actually I do, I remember that same Republican President using it as a rallying cry.  What I don't remember is John Kerry trying to use the deaths of thousands of people as a political tool in an effort to win an election.  That's not why John Kerry lost, he lost because he was awful, but at least he lost with a little integrity.

So, Republican voters who are parroting this nonsense, I'm begging you to be smarter than this.  And for a more direct message to every Republican candidate, surrogate and person at Fox trying to use the deaths of four Americans to win an election because you don't have anything else to try.  You are a terrible human being.  Please go fuck yourself, and have a nice day.

Jeeps

The only thing I have to say about Mitt Romney being a liar is that he seems to be a little better at it than the rest of us.  Nobody is ever 100% sure what Mitt believes and trying to pinpoint his real position on anything would require a sort of political quantum mechanics that I don't think anyone has invented yet (possibly because Republicans don't believe in quantum mechanics, I'm not sure).  Having said that, I don't understand why people are so surprised by the Romney campaign's totally false commercial about shipping Jeep jobs to China.  A political campaign lied while also putting winning ahead of the good of the voters.  People are acting like nobody's ever done that before.  Welcome to politics folks.

Climate Change

This huge, unprecedented storm that basically shut down New York City really has a lot of people in public office and in the media talking about the effects of climate change and energy policy and what we have to do to get our climate back under control.  Ha! No, that's not true, I'm just fucking with you.  Nobody cares about that shit.  Science is hard and confusing.  Let's get back to talking about campaign tactics and why I'm supposed to be interested in Ohio once every four years.

FEMA

There are enough stupid things that Mitt Romney actually said that Democrats really don't need to twist words and extrapolate things to make him look stupid.  All Romney said was that, in general, it's always better to give things back to the states, and it's even better to give them back to the private sector.  Take it from someone who watched every minute of every Republican primary debate, this wasn't anything.

This wasn't serious suggestion about getting rid of FEMA, it was just another expression of the Republican fantasy that the private sector does everything better.  It's stupid and not even a little bit true, but saying things that are stupid and not even a little bit true is how you win Republican primaries.

OK that's it.  Please go vote tomorrow.  Try to vote for somebody smart and reasonable, but even if you can't bring yourself to do that, you should still vote.