Seven years. It's sort of hard to believe, isn't it? How much time has passed?

It's times like these I wish I believed in Hell. I've got a list of people I'd save a spot or two for, beginning with, but not limited to, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, and ending with people like Osama bin Laden. Satan, pleased to meet them, could force them to marry each other in the Ironic Punishment Division at Hell Labs, not because there's anything wrong with a bunch of old dudes marrying each other (what do I care?), but because the truth is they all belong together. Right next to Homer Simpson eating the world's supply of doughnuts. Fucking despicable human beings, the whole lot of them.

Except for Homer. He's more of a jerkass. Why else would he tempt the fates by eating his soul crumb in the middle of the night?

But seriously, folks... this isn't getting ridiculous; this has been ridiculous ever since that goddamn son of a bitch was elected (allegedly).

The September 11, 2001 attacks.

The anthrax mailings that took seven years to solve, and unconvincingly so.

The waste of time and money and blood in Iraq.

The absolutely disgraceful non-response to Katrina.

Habeus corpus and the right to privacy, the very bedrocks of democracy, being treated like mere inconveniences to those who would do anything they can to cling to power.

The blatant hypocrisy and doublespeak, as flagrant as a lynch mob willingly posing for a photo after a hanging— because the executioners were also the cops, the judges, and the jury.

The vitriolic polarization of the U.S.

The economy tanking.

Unemployment rising.

People losing their homes.

All of these things happened within the last eight years, eight years of Bush and Cheney and Rove (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain) and Rumsfeld and Rice and Chertoff and Ashcroft and Gonzalez and so-called Homeland Security and Fox News and god knows what else. Each of them, if not directly responsible then at least complicit, in allowing this live action Hieronymus Bosch painting to continue.

These clowns, McCain— "War hero"? I care not.— and Palin, are doing everything they can to whitewash history to hold onto power a little longer. The fact is all of those things I listed happened on the Republicans' watch; they're saying to you, to us, in front of a backdrop of two burning buildings:

"REWARD US FOR OUR INCOMPETENCE."

... Like cats bringing home a dead bird to its master as a present; only instead of a dead bird we've got thousands of dead— whether wrought by airplane, nature, economics, or war.

Question is, will we tell them to kiss our collective ass this time, or will we reply with "Thank you, sir, may I have another?"

We'll see soon enough, I guess. It's hard enough figuring out why in the hell McCain is within even 30 points of Barack Obama, let alone one or two. One has to admit, between all these disasters, it'd be stupid to decide this next election on criteria like moose hunting and lipstick and pitbulls and POW camps and who I could barbecue with. A "culture war", they call it; it's much easier to fight one of those because you can stir up whatever you want on a slow news day (see Bill O'Reilly: "Christmas, the War on").

Clearly, with every passing year, my entries on the subject— whether on this blog or in other media— get angrier, more dyspeptic. At this point, I've said everything I could possibly say, so I'll let someone else who can say things a whole lot better than I can take the lead.

Text version:
http://thenewshole.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/09/10/1376450.aspx


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PERKBFgg_I&fmt=18


Watch the parking meters,
Henry