Hate America? Vote Republican.

Where do we as a society draw the line between far right wing ideology and mental illness? How have we gotten to the point in the United States where we will have a presidential election featuring one candidate who straddles that grey line, who makes Elmer Fudd look like a Mensa member, and who, if elected President, will almost certainly drag our country into the depths of despair?

Think about a President who would condone the actions of the American terrorist who killed three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado. Think about a President who doesn’t believe in man-made global warning and who’ll do nothing to reduce our toxic emissions, and may even push to increase them. Think about a President who doesn’t accept the separation of church and state, and actively pushes an agenda to make America a Christian theocracy. Think about a President who prefers war to diplomacy and sees violent intervention as a strategy of first choice. And finally, think about a President who does not understand or care about our Constitution, and who will think nothing of violating it in the pursuit of creating an ultra-conservative/fascist government.

Our system of governance in America is broken. Next November, we will likely have a choice between a Wall Street-endorsed establishment Democrat and a borderline mental case. This is what we’ve come to, and to all of the liberals and progressives who are in denial, who are certain Cruz or Carson or Trump could never win the White House, all I can say is wake the fuck up. Our elections are rigged and have nothing to do with the will of the people. If the one percent and the Deep State want a Republican to win, a Republican will win.

Although I’m not Harold Camping predicting the end of the world, I think America is at a crossroads. Should any one of the Republican candidates prove victorious next November, it will herald the end of the United States as most of us know it. Our country already has serious problems that need to be addressed, from income inequality to campaign finance reform to a crumbling infrastructure, and the only thing I can say for certain is that if a Republican is elected President, all of those issues and more will only get worse.

Ben Carson Should Not Be Allowed Anywhere Near the White House

Just a couple of observations about Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson.

Carson has said some very strange and troubling things during this campaign. He has also, so it appears, lied about parts of his life story, and was in full defense mode all of last week after the media checked into some of his claims. But here’s the thing that gets to me: Who makes a serious run for the presidency and DOESN’T expect his or her background to be investigated? It was the same thing for Bush, who apparently thought his personal history should be off limits to journalists.  Yet Carson is shocked, shocked I tell you, that his past is being scrutinized by the media. WTF? You’re a freakin’ brain surgeon and you don’t have the ability to understand that as a presidential candidate your past will be investigated? Something’s off here and it’s either the size of his ego or IQ.

The second issue relating to Carson is truly a fundamental one. As mentioned above, Carson has said some seriously batty stuff during this campaign, like the biblical Joseph built the pyramids to store grain and that being in prison can turn you gay. The way I see it there are only two situations that can explain Ben Carson’s loony beliefs: Either he really believes what he’s saying, which is a serious indictment of our education system in America, or that he is only saying crazy things to appeal to the Right’s lunatic fringe, which makes him one of the most disingenuous, manipulative people to ever run for office. I don’t really know the answer to this conundrum, but as more and more evidence emerges that he is a pathological liar, I might cast my vote for the latter.

Presidential wannabe Lindsey Graham claims he can read your mind

Republicans running for President are going to have to trade in the clown car for a clown bus as every member of the party under the age of 80 is, or will soon be, a candidate for the nation’s top office (except John Bolton). And as the field grows, the effort to stand out from the crowd becomes more daunting for them, and more entertaining (like watching a horror movie) for us.

Soon to announce his intentions, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham set a pretty high bar at the Iowa Republican Party-sponsored Lincoln Day Dinner. After listening to fellow Presidential wannabes gin up the crowd’s pacemakers to optimum blood flow with tales of how many bombs they’d drop on ISIS if they were President, Graham took the floor.

“If I’m president of the United States and you’re thinking about joining al-Qaida or ISIL — anybody thinking about that?” he asked to laughs. “I’m not gonna call a judge. I’m gonna call a drone and we’re gonna kill you.”

Blue-haired women grew weak at the knees and the men’s pacemakers were smokin’ after that one. Graham is going to read your mind, and if he doesn’t like what you’re thinking, he’s gonna open a can of serious whoop ass on you.

“We're gonna kill you?” Now maybe this is Republican humor and, like Japanese humor, I just don’t get it. If not, it has to be one of the most grotesque, idiotic utterances to ever pass the lips of a (soon-to-be) Presidential candidate. What is wrong with these people that 1) a U.S. senator would make such an asinine statement and 2) people would cheer him for saying it? The possibility that Lindsey Graham could be sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office one day makes climate change seem almost inconsequential.

Don’t worry folks, things are just starting to heat up, and you can be sure that the passengers riding in the clown bus will provide us with many more sweet quotes like this in the months to come, if they ever figure out how to get it out of first gear.

Surprise! Jeb Bush is as big a moron as his brother

Just how utterly and hopelessly ignorant and out of touch is the current crop of Republican candidates for President? How large is the universe? When does the bottomless cup of coffee end? What is the largest number we know times itself?

Today, let’s look at Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida and George’s little brother. Here’s a guy who has probably had presidential aspirations since he was in diapers, and now his time has come. Some months ago, as he started to get serious about this running for President thing, he brought together a team of advisors, and around that same time announced to the world that he was not going to run in the shadow of his big brother, but would be his own man. Of course, what made that statement such a joke was that his team of advisors was full of familiar names from his brother’s failed administration.

But let’s bring things up to the present. During a recent interview on FOX News, Megyn Kelly asked Jeb a very straightforward question: Knowing what we know today, would you still Invade Iraq? Little brother gave her an answer, but it was an answer to a different question. Instead of addressing the “what we know now” part, his answer was to a “what we knew before the Iraq invasion” question. In recent days Jeb has tried to clarify what he meant to say, but has botched it so badly that even the mainstream press is wondering what the hell his position on Iraq is.

Here’s where the serious stupid comes in. Among all the advisors Bush has brought on board his campaign, was there not one among them who said: “Jeb, listen man, somebody at some point is going to ask you about Iraq. We need to have a response ready for that inevitability”? For God’s sake, didn’t anybody on his team think about that? Based on his bumbling, stumbling media responses, apparently not. That he AND HIS ADVISERS failed to prepare for such an obvious question is unfathomable.

If we vote this moronic brother of a moron into office, we deserve what we get.

The Kochenstein Monster Lives

Without question, the biggest news of the weekend (sorry, Mayweather) was the announcements by former neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former head of Hewlett-Packard Carly Fiorina that they are running for President. Wow. A surgeon who knows how to fix brains, but doesn’t understand how they work and a former business dynamo who was consistently rated the worst CEO in America have joined the field of Republican luminaries campaigning for America’s top job.

There is actually only one Republican running for President, but it has five faces  (and could end up having as many as 13).  This multi-headed monstrosity is the creation of the evil Koch brothers whom we also have to thank for the Tea Party, which visibly sustains the hideous creature. The Kochenstein monster answers only to its masters and speaks in one voice, advocating regressive, repressive policies that are favored by the criminally insane and old white people with dementia.

If I were a rich man, I would award a large sum of money to anyone who could identify a significant policy difference between any of the current Republican candidates. They all speak Tea Party, a language filled with code words and dog whistles that provides a thin veil over their true racist, elitist, greedy selves. They are united in their hatred of Obama and his accomplishments, blaming everything from the Baltimore riots to Dutch Elm disease on the socialist, foreign-born uppity negro.

At least in the Democratic race there is a clear choice between a very moderate establishment candidate and a boat-rocking progressive socialist, but on the Republican side there are many different faces, but they are all saying the same things.

The Kochenstein monster stumbles forward, its mass increasing as its mind shrinks, terrorizing many in its path as it lurches towards its final destination: Washington, D.C. It’s time to grab the pitchforks and light the torches.

Politics in 2015: Ignorance is an asset

The first two “official” Republican candidates for the presidency, Ben Carson and Ted Cruz, are fumbling their way from one gaffe to the next, and left-wing commentators and publications are having a field day. From the shirt-rending hypocrisy of Ted Cruz signing up for Obamacare after spending 24/7, 365 days a year trying to destroy it to Ben Carson’s bloodthirsty homophobic rants, columns of eye-rolling, head shaking revelations are being posted at Salon, The Huffington Post, Raw Story and many other zines.

The one point that is overlooked in all of the verbiage is that in today’s Republican Party, ignorance is an asset. The religious right and Tea Party members are deeply distrustful of people outside their ideological circle, which is the majority of Americans, seeing them as snarky know-it-alls who look down their noses at America’s true patriots and their bedrock values. As difficult as it is, we have to come to grips with the fact that one of the two major political parties in America values superstitious beliefs and unquestioning adherence to a faith-based ideology over reason and objective reality, and that this group is putty in the hands of today’s ruling elites.

Politics in America today is not about competing solutions to our major problems, it is about competing views of reality. Our political leaders can’t even agree on what’s real and what isn’t real. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, we have people in positions of power who believe the earth is 6000 years old, that humans and dinosaurs lived together; that global warming is a hoax; that homosexuals should be put to death; and yes, that dark-skinned people are inferior.

Many of us shake our heads in astonishment when Ben Carson reveals he knows absolutely nothing about modern-day Israel, a country he loudly supports with every fiber of his being, but that attitude only strengthens him in the eyes of his supporters. Ignorance is strength. War is peace. Up is down.