Inept Vs. Insane: Start Your Engines

A Inept v Insane300Now that we’ve taken down the Christmas lights, suffered through the New Year’s hangover and backtracked on the resolutions, it’s time to gear up for the 2014 midterm elections.

If anything, the chasm between left and right has only widened since Barack Obama made his last State of the Union speech after trouncing Mitt Romney in the presidential sweepstakes. Sure, the two monoliths finally agreed on a budget, but mostly from exhaustion and the fear of mass defections from fed up voters.

The left is feeling their organic sustainable fair trade oats after 2012, egged on by “news” outlets such as MSNBC, Salon, and MoveOn.org. Like hungry wolves, they sense that their life’s dream of a progressive America is finally within their grasp, if only their elected representatives would pounce and finish the right once and for all.

Just this week, New York Governor Andy Cuomo told conservatives to take a hike, literally. Traditional Republican values are no longer welcome in the Empire State, and the Gov wants them out. (You have to wonder what would happen if Wall St. took him up on the offer and moved to Kalamazoo or Moscow, Idaho.)

And here in California, actress, singer and former Miss Venezuela Maria Conchita Alonso was booted from The Vagina Monologues for endorsing right wing assemblyman Tim Donnelly for Governor against St. Jerry. The performance was to have taken place in SF’s mission district, where Alonso is no longer welcome.

Ironically, the most visible and talked about candidate so far this year is Hillary Clinton, who is not running for any office. Democrats have become so sure of their invincibility that they are already making plans for the coronation.

And why not? The potential candidate the Dems feared most, Chris Christie,  is up to his neck in the watergate-under-the-bridge scandal, and Virginia’s Bob McDonnell is struggling to defend his extravagant lifestyle while governor. Conservatives swoon at the prospect of Ted Cruz or Rand Paul at the head of ticket, but personally, I don’t think either one or both of them together could scare up enough voters to overcome the Clinton juggernaut. Of course, two years is a long time and a lot can happen, and people thought HRC was a slam dunk five years ago too. And we still have 2014 to deal with, as boring as it might seem right now.

There should be plenty of action coming down the pike to keep us news  junkies busy. Will the Repubby’s start another debt ceiling fight? Can they keep from making stupid comments about women, gays, and latinos? No. Mike Huckabee is commenting on the “female libido” even as I write this. The Republicans haven’t learned anything from their past defeats. They don’t even like each other and will likely spend most of their energy trying to out-conservative each other in the primaries.

Meanwhile, the Democrats will continue to nickel and dime us into permanent poverty. They’ll demonize anyone who doesn’t fall in lockstep with their politically correct agenda. With the opposition in disarray, who’s to stop them?

More and more voters are dropping their party affiliation in disgust. We are fed up with having to choose between inept vs. insane. Stay tuned.

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7 Responses to Inept Vs. Insane: Start Your Engines

  1. Ben Emery says:

    The scariest policies coming out of DC at the moment are those dubbed bi partisan. Omnibus budgets are basically pork barrel fantasies that come from incompetent legislators that fail to actually do their jobs in a planned meaningful fashion. A dysfunctional congress working within a dysfunctional system they have set up to secure the futures of the two largest and most powerful institutions in America. For around a decade we have had approval ratings 25% or lower for congress and in November 2013 their approval rating was 5%. Yet come November 2014 between 85-95% of incumbents will be reelected and congress will have close to a 99% party affiliation of Democratic or Republican.

    This is ridiculous and embarrassing.

  2. Barry Pruett says:

    Ben: Truer have not been spoken. The omnibus lovefest has been ridiculous. Everytime Congress “gets along” we take it in the wallet. I do want to talk to you at some point about corporations and solutuions related thereto.

  3. Greg Goodknight says:

    I don’t expect the GOP House leadership to do anything to rock the boat that Obamacare appears to be sinking all by its lonesome. They want to make Democrats homeless in November, or at least House-less*. Senate-less, too. The electorate just doesn’t see a President who will not sign a budget as equally culpable in the resulting shutdown, and this is not the election to be cast as the meanies closing the National Parks.

    (*thanx and a hat tip to PJ O’R)

  4. Chris Peterson says:

    I can guarantee you that, in the boardrooms of Wall Street, there are no decisions being made that have anything to do with whether a candidate is Rep or Dem. Their choice of who to donate to depends totally on how much leverage they can get from one schlep vs the other.

    You drink lattes and I shoot guns is only contrived BS that this two party system depends on, and fewer people are being fooled; hence the drop in party numbers.

    My older brother recently sent me a petition to have BHO impeached. My response was; to what end? Replace him with who? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The system is FUBAR, and until the citizens become, once again, the only source of income for their representatives, changing generals in this idiotic war would serve no purpose.

    And please; someone stop the Hillary express; she’s more tied to Wall Street than any of the last four Presidents. Reagan was tied to American business, Bush One to international corporations, Clinton had a coalition of national and international business, Bush the Lesser thought he was a monarch, and Obama is a Jeckle/Hyde politician who talks liberal in public as he moves closer to a feudal state with his TPP.

    No one on the conservative side really stands out yet but, be assured; there will be a manufactured “leader” by the next election, and the conversation will once again be on the morals of common citizens rather than the cause of their economic demise.

    The private owners of the Fed will continue to prop up the economy by creating more debt for the American worker, and as long as China doesn’t go in the toilet, whistle-blowers can be demonized, supporting the troops means supporting the mission, and the threat of the boogeyman can convince us that giving up freedoms is necessary, things will be presented as hunky-dory here in Mudville. (We don’t need a green, yellow, orange and red alert scale; network news makes that superfluous, and they’re much more nuanced and effective.)

  5. steve cottrell says:

    Bob:

    Regarding your comment: “We are fed up with having to choose between inept vs. insane.”

    I recall an Oliphant editorial cartoon from the ’60s –– eight small panels. The first panel was a mug of LBJ and, as short quotes appeared under his caricature, the image slowly morphed into Nixon in the final panel as short quotes from him found their way into the cartoon. The line at the bottom of the strip said it all: “In America you always have a choice.”

    I never forgot that cartoon and am often reminded of it.

  6. Terry Pittsford says:

    Sadly I think that if Abraham Lincoln himself were running on the GOP ticket, the Republicans would find some what of screwing it up. But it’s like Chris says, it doesn’t make any difference to the REAL entities running this country, the corporations which mantle the candidates wear, in the long run it will be who THEY decided to support with massive amounts of money and influence. The most frightening aspect of all is that these corporations whom our Supreme Court has decided have the same status as individuals, are not even American citizens in many cases. Let’s face it money decides and defines the highest office in the land. Our votes are an excercise in misguided values based on faulty perceptions.

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