A week or two ago a fellow named John Fleming (R-LA) shared a link on his Facebook page abhorring the latest wholesale abortion scheme. The link led to an article touting Planned Parenthood’s new $8 billion “Abortionplex”. The site was www.theonion.com. Yes, “The Onion”. As if Planned Parenthood having $8 billion wasn’t enough to suspect a joke.
About that same time, Tennessee state senator Stacy Campfield (R) declared that AIDS came from “one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men.” If he recalled correctly?
Also around then, Alabama state senator Shadrick McGill (R – of course) said this: “It’s a Biblical principle. If you double a teacher’s pay scale, you’ll attract people who aren’t called to teach”. This from a guy who voted to increase his own salary by 62%.
Meanwhile, back at the Republican nomination race we find Rick Perry oopsing and Newt Gingrich saying he’d put a colony on the moon. Why anyone would want a colony on the moon was left as a homework exercise. As for Rick Santorum, he’s going to put an end to contraception.
My Republican friends, are you down in the dumps over all this? Do you cringe every time some buffoon with “(R)” after his name says something idiotic? Like…
“Things are more like they are now than they have ever been.” – Gerald Ford (Perhaps impersonating Yogi Berra?)
“Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.” – Ronald Reagan
“Facts are stupid things.” – Ronald Reagan (Freudian slip? Trying to say ‘facts are stubborn things’?)
“What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.” – Dan Quayle (And he would know.)
“I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn’t study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people.” – Dan Quayle (Those people should just speak ‘Merican like everyone else.)
“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?” – W (I know I never asked it.)
“I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.” – W
“We know there are known knowns: there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns: that is to say we know there are things we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” – Donald Rumsfeld (I feel dizzy.)
“We had no domestic attacks under Bush”. – Rudy Giuliani
“As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where — where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border.” – Sarah Palin (Wait. Putin’s head is in Alaska?)
“We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada. And I think now, isn’t that ironic?” – Sarah Palin, master of irony
“I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.” – Michele Bachmann (Not that it matters, but Gerald Ford was president.)
“But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States. … I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers who worked tirelessly — men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.” – Michele Bachmann (And no, John Quincy Adams was neither one of the Founding Fathers, nor did he have a thing to do with the abolition of slavery. In fact, neither did the actual founding fathers, many of whom themselves owned slaves, and were all long dead when slavery was abolished.)
“I think if we give Glenn Beck the numbers, he can solve this [the national debt].” – Michelle Bachmann (I have nothing to say to that.)
“What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (chuckle) — this is working very well for them.” – Barbara Bush, on the Katrina evacuees at the Astrodome in Houston (That famous Southern hospitality.)
“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.” – W (old Texas saying.)
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on you.” – Virginia Foxx (R-NC. The North Carolina version.)
“If you’re oriented toward animals, bestiality, then, you know, that’s not something that can be used, held against you or any bias be held against you for that. Which means you’d have to strike any laws against bestiality, if you’re oriented toward corpses, toward children, you know, there are all kinds of perversions … pedophiles or necrophiliacs or what most would say is perverse sexual orientations.” – Rep. Louis Gohmert (Cataloging sexual perversions. I think.)
“I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I’m not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do… One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn’t know it. I mean, there’s little blood there and stuff like that. We went to a movie and then had a midnight picnic on a satanic altar.” – Christine O’Donnell (Not making stuff up.)
“I would have become a Hare Krishna but I didn’t want to become a vegetarian. And that is honestly the reason why — because I’m Italian, I love meatballs!” – Christine O’Donnell (I have nothing against one’s choice of religion being decided by food preferences.)
Or, of course, any number of other quotes from W, or Joe Barton apologizing to BP after the oil spill, or Larry Craig’s wide stance, or Sue Lowden recommending a barter-based health care system, or that Ohio Tea Party dude in the Waffen SS uniform, or, well, let’s face it – I could go on and on couldn’t I? And that’s without getting to the faux comedians like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck or Ann Coulter. They don’t really count since all they’re doing is trying to make up for the right wing shortage of professional comedians. Yeesss, there’s Dennis Miller but I won’t rub salt in the wound. Nor will I stoop to Pat Robertson since even you guys know he’s off his rocker.
I’m something of a history buff but nowhere can I find such a ludicrous collection of political ninnies as we have now in the Republican party. So, if you, dear reader, are a Republican with a brain and have taken to wearing a paper bag over your head, if you have the GOP blues guess what. I have a very simple, easy to implement, one step cure. It’s so obvious I wonder you haven’t thought of it yourself. Ready?
Here it is. In the next election, all you have to do is vote straight Democratic. There. Nothing to it. I guarantee in a matter of days Republican politicians will start sounding smarter. Well, some of them. Maybe. You see, it could be that some of them aren’t actually as stupid as they sound. They only act that way because they think you like it.
What’s that you say? You’re worried about turning the country over to the Democrats? Uh, this country survived eight years of Dubya, it can handle eight years of Obama. Besides, not much will actually change. Remember, these are Democrats. As you pull the lever repeat after Will Rogers: “I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat”.
