How To Tell If You're An Idiot

All of us have some areas in which our powers of intellect are not up to par, in fact at which we suck out loud. For me, that would be math and cars. Math makes my brain hurt, my eyes glaze over and all sexual functions cease. I drive cars just fine, but have no ability or desire to repair them, have grease under my fingernails or busted knuckles and would be thrilled to have a disposable one.

But having bad math skills, the inability to carry a tune, do car repairs, lousy spelling or being a Cleveland Browns fan does not make you an idiot, although the last one is on the line. No, being an idiot means one is so magically benighted as to be a danger to oneself and others by sheer force of stupidity. If one reaches this rarified height of idiocy, it should be required to have one's name and address sewn into one's clothing and a large sign on the front and back reading "DANGER. IDIOT."

For example, if one cannot tell the difference between day and night, one is an idiot. Yes, both time periods have some things in common. Both have large orbs in the sky which are bright and noticeable. At times, it may be dark during the day, say during a storm, but that does not make it night. Conversely, it may be very bright at night during a full moon, but that does not make it day. If this is a difficult concept, one is an idiot.

Or let's say one cannot distinguish the difference between men and women. Both have things in common. Both have arms and legs, are bipedal (when sober), have varying amounts of hair and often wear similar clothing. Yes, at times a man may (intentionally) look very much like a woman or vice versa. But in general, most people can tell one from the other. If one cannot do this, one is an idiot.

The inability to distinguish day from night or men from women, however, pales in comparison to the inability to discern the difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Yes, both have animal mascots with four legs, both are inundated with corporate money, both are too apt to use military force and both are comprised of fallible, imperfect human beings. There are, however, notable and important differences which are obvious to anyone who is not an idiot.

For example, if one is a woman, Black, gay, Latino, poor, middle class, in a union, a student, a veteran, sick or interested in breathing clean air, Republicans are not only disinterested in you, they are doing their best to make your life as miserable as possible, whereas the Democrats are most often doing the exact opposite.

That means if you are a woman, Republicans want to take away your right to an abortion as well as most birth control and health services. They think you should be paid less than a man and should be ashamed of yourself for being such a slut that someone was forced to rape you. And in Texas, they're making voting while female a test of endurance. Start practicing jumping through hoops. Hoops that are on fire.

If you're Black, you probably already know that the Republican Party would prefer to see you playing a banjo, tap dancing or baling cotton. For free, while singing Negro spirituals. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot is an all-time favorite. You are a lazy thug and if you attained any success, it was certainly undeserved. You also realize that they aren't too happy about you voting, let alone winning an election, unless you're a Republican. Odds are you're not.

If you're gay, you know that Republicans are happy about one thing, and that is that they will not have to spend eternity with you because you will of course be burning in hell. But in the meantime, they would like to repeal DADT, make marriage equality illegal, put an end to same-sex couples adopting children and only date you in secret.

If you are Latino, adios. Forget immigration reform, muchacho, and use those cantaloupe-muscle legs to trot your ass right back across the border. But leave the salsa. Tortilla Coast wouldn't be the same without it.

If you're poor, God hates you. Too bad.

If you're middle class, you have a future. At Walmart.

If you're a union worker, the Republicans would prefer you to simply be a worker. Pensions are for pussies. So is a living wage.

If you're a student, time to realize that there's no free lunch. Or education. Or hope. Besides, education makes one apt to think and reason. Republicans are already losing enough voters.

If you are a veteran, thank you for your service. Now fuck off.

If you're sick, well, there are plenty of doctors out there and state-of-the-art medicine and facilities. What? No health insurance? What song would you like played at your funeral? Anyway, the Republicans are too busy trying to deprive 40 million Americans from having health care to worry about you right now.

You like clean air? And water? You must be joking. You know who the Republicans' biggest donors are, right? Can't run cars on trees. When wind or sun rays can be sold by the barrel, we'll talk.

Of course this abbreviated list of examples will not be enough to convince some people that there is an actual difference between the two parties. Because drones. Because the NSA. Because Gitmo. Because Benghazi. Oh wait, that's a Tea Party line. Fucking idiots.

©2013 Kona Lowell

Citing Problems, Obama Cancels Affordable Health Care

Washington, DC. This morning in a Rose Garden press conference, President Obama announced that the federal government would be canceling the Affordable Care Act, commonly know as Obamacare. Admitting that glitches with the new program's website are completely insurmountable, the president shrugged his shoulders and said, "Oh well, you win some, you lose some. Time to punt."

Republicans were quick to respond.

"We knew this wouldn't work," said Speaker John Boehner, "because it involves technology. You know, computer (hic) stuff. It's not like you just have to type in 'girl scouts big tits german shepherds' and hit ENTER. It's really compli- (hic) complicated."

A CNN poll also found that an overwhelming majority of the 30 million uninsured Americans agreed with the president's decision. Said one respondent, Ray 'Scrapper' Nuss of Toadstomp, Texas, "I've got by without insurance all my damn life. My grandpappy lived to be 54 years old! I reckon I can beat that. Shootin' for it anyhow. And hell, I'm fixin' to win the lottery any day now so I can buy a damn hospital. I git 10 tickets a week."

Other uninsured Americans were not as hopeful, but generally agreed that insurance was a luxury best left to the wealthy, like BMW's or Louis Vuitton handbags. Others admitted that it was selfish to expect health care and that if God had wanted them to see their children grow up he would have given them the ability to see into the future.

President Obama also announced that due to the impossible to overcome technical difficulties involved, all Middle East peace negotiations would be stopped, future space exploration would be abandoned, efforts to halt climate change would cease, nuclear arms reduction would be terminated and all medical research would be replaced with giant government funded leech farms.

"Now if you'll excuse me," President Obama said as he left the Rose Garden, "we have some post offices to name."

©2013 Kona Lowell

Understanding the Red State of Mind

Rational Americans are scratching their heads, wondering what the fuck just happened. Our nation was dragged to the vertigo-inducing brink of financial ruin, the world held its collective breath, millions of people lost paychecks or were harmed in countless ways and all at a cost $160,000,000 per day. And for what? Absolutely nothing. Zip. Nada.

What thinking, sane Americans do not understand is that the red state congresspeople, and their vocal constituents who caused this disaster, do not see the world as we do.

We must remember that the greatest portion of these saboteurs hail from states that made up the old Confederacy, and aside from simply being rabidly opposed to even the concept of a Black president (or a Black person achieving anything at all beyond sharecropper status), they're still licking generational wounds from the near biblical ass-kicking another president they heartily despised handed them. Then they had integration forced on them. Trust me. I was there. They didn't like it.

Unable to get real vengeance, their festering resentment has led them to heretical, warped Christian fundamentalism, which in turn has bred hatred of other races, rejection of science, militancy, scorn for education, casual dismissal of facts and a seething, all-consuming contempt for government. Unfortunately, most of these red states would be wastelands without the federal government propping up their very existence. That pisses them off even more. The Yankees are still winning, goddammit.

So all that remains for these Tea Party Republicans to do is to be treasonous, racist, uncompromising, progress-halting wobblefucks whose sole goal is to make life miserable for the rest of us.

Imagine if these shitheads were to draft football players the same way they elect their representatives. They would seek out, first of all, players that fucking hate football. Then they would pick the ones with the least skills, knowledge of the game and ability to be a team player. They would get their asses kicked up and down the field. And then they would whine about it and demand the rules be changed. Of course this won't happen because red staters love their football, and even tolerate Black players who do well. Yes, they would love to have an all-white team, but they want to win.

So for the past couple weeks, over 300,000,000 of us have been held hostage by 32 of these assholes. What are we going to do about it? We outnumber them. We're smarter. We can spell.

Here's the deal. We either get up off our lazy, I-didn't-get-my-sparkly-unicorn asses and mobilize every fucking vote in this country in 2014 and toss these traitorous shits out or we live with this for a few more decades. You want Hillary to be hamstrung like Obama has been for 8 years?

These racist, ignorant fools who refer to the American Civil War as "The War of Northern Aggression" think the South will rise again because it's still floating. Let's not let that happen. Flush the toilet.

©2013 Kona Lowell

Experts: GOP Died of Auto-Erotic Asphyxiation, Not Suicide

Washington, DC. This morning experts asserted that the death of the Republican Party was not due to suicide as believed, but to auto-erotic asphyxiation gone horribly wrong.

"We kept asking ourselves," said Howard Fineman, editor of the Huffington Post, "how they could possibly be pursuing an agenda so ridiculously out of tune with the majority of the country, and now we know."

"They were getting off on it, apparently," Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader opined, "It's sad, really. Maybe if the weren't so sexually repressed this wouldn't have happened."

Experts say that the lower the Republican Party approval fell, the higher the arousal level rose, especially among Tea Party members.

"It starts, of course, with soft-core political porn, like The Weekly Standard," said Dr. Theodore Gimlet, Professor of Political Science, Harvard. "But soon this is no longer satisfying and addicts like these Tea Party types move on to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. Eventually they get into the hard stuff, like World Net Daily and Glenn Beck. Before long even Alex Jones is not satisfying enough and they begin to experiment with dangerous self-delusion and abuse. There's a constant urge to take it to the next level, cheating death ever more riskily, timing it ever more closely, down to the last second.

"These guys had a perpetual hardon for Obama. And then there was immigration, women's rights, gay rights. They just kept tightening the noose. The more the country protested, the more the polls showed them plummeting like a wounded B-52, the more giddy they became. But the government shutdown and the looming debt ceiling fight proved to be more than they could handle. Their fantasy overcame all sense of personal well-being and propriety. It's a dangerous practice, and quite addictive. They just couldn't stop."

"Well, now we know why they always insisted we provide a podium for them to stand behind," said Walter 'Wires' Tangled, CNN cameraman. "I always thought it was so they could use it to steady themselves, like at a bar. Guess not."

©2013 Kona Lowell

Senator Cruz Goes Boom

Washington, DC. Traffic was temporarily rerouted last night due to an explosion in the Capitol Building. At 12:45 AM, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) rushed wildly into the House of Representatives with 20 lbs. of dynamite strapped to his waist, demanding that all the Republicans commit ritual suicide by leaping from the Capitol dome or he would blow himself and the entire Capitol Building up. He was set upon immediately by Senator Rand Paul who had followed him into the room and began beating Senator Cruz violently about the head with a hardbound copy of Atlas Shrugged. Unfortunately, this proved to be too little too late and Senator Cruz, with a cry of "I'm coming Tail-Gunner Joe!" was able to detonate his explosives.

Among the dead were 25 Tea Party members of the House as well as Senators Cruz and Paul. The wounded Republicans were moved onto the street to await emergency medical care which arrived a few hours later. Cleanup will be delayed due to the shutdown and members will meet in another wing of the building until repairs are completed. Talks on resuming the operation of the government are expected to move quickly and passage of a clean CR is believed to be likely.

President Obama addressed the stunned nation and offered his condolences.

"Good evening. Tonight we witnessed a tragic, senseless waste of human... ha, hum, excuse me... human life...he he... excuse me.. ahem.... life... and hope that we can all move forward.... ha... ahem... together and resolve our differences... wheeee heeee heeee.... excuse me.... ahem.... etc., etc., etc. Thank you."

Colleagues of Senator Cruz held a prayer vigil outside the damaged building despite the freak thunderstorm until one, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), was seriously injured by lightning. The vigil was moved to a nearby Denny's where it continued into the early morning. A hearty Grand Slam breakfast was served and only Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), who had the honor of blessing the food, was removed to a local hospital suffering from food poisoning.

Majority Leader Harry Reid remembered his combative fellow senator, "I knew Senator Cruz had an explosive personality, but this was unexpected."

Democrats met later and toasted the late senator with several rounds of Cuba Libres.

President Obama ordered all Capitol trashcans be adorned with red, white and blue buntings and ordered all Confederate flags to be flown at half-staff.

©2013 Kona Lowell