Awful, Better, Best, and Perfect

An acquaintance recently sent me an ad for a President Obama memorial Xmas ornament. I was tempted. He was sarcastic, calling Obama “Uncle Thomas” and “Onkle Tom” followed by a list of Obama’s real and perceived imperfections. He’s an old, middle class, white guy who probably doesn’t know any actual black Americans but he’s convinced that Obama was a tool of the power elites and “that’s how I perceived him, as did and do many in the black community. I knew well before he was elected that he had to be a tool of those who truly govern the country.” I don’t know about the “many in the black community,” but about 10% of that so-called community voted for Trump; mostly proving you can fool some of the people all of the time. I’m tempted to buy one of those  ornaments just to piss off the nutjobs on the far left and right. Anything that irritates those two herds of nutjobs and morons is worth owning and a bargain at $22.

I only wish the world was that clear and simple? My experience tells me that nothing is as simple as it looks from thousands of miles away or even across the street.

I admit that I was and am impressed with Barak Obama’s performances as President of the United States. That is saying something, because I’m mostly unimpressed-to-disgusted by the presidents I’ve observed in my lifetime. Starting with Truman, who was president when I was born and left office when I was five years old, through Bush II there haven’t been many bright moments in American executive branch politics.

While he didn’t stay in office long enough to accomplish as much as he might have, Jimmy Carter was probably the 2nd best president in my lifetime. He was too much of a micro-manager, a typical fault of self-made business men, he had a vision for the United States that would have positioned the country far more soundly than the mess made by his successor, Reagan. We’d have moved into the metric system, evolved away from oil and carbon-pollution energy sources, and our education system wouldn’t fallen to 3rd world status. But Carter lost to a candidate every bit as goofy and unqualified as Trump before anything resembling Fox News existed; when he had the Fairness Doctrine to balance the media foolishness. Today, Carter wouldn’t have a chance even as a Democrat. He’d be too easy a target. All I really know about Kennedy comes from history books. I was 15 when he was murdered, but there was no politics in my life at the time. I do know that many of the adults I knew in Kansas were not unhappy he was killed. So much for the good old days when we were “one country, united.”

Otherwise, the presidents who have mismanaged the country in my lifetime have all been awful or less-awful.

Your Russian Representatives

How do you know if your politician is a Russian plant? Easy, he or she is a Republican. How do you know if your personal issue lobbying organization is a Russian front? Easy, is it the NRA? If it is, you are giving money to an organization that already has plenty of cash, mostly rubles.

Watching (and feeling sorry for) the Supreme Court

What a title, right? What kind of asshole could feel sorry for John Roberts, the Soprano's Tonys (Scalia and Kennedy), Charlie Thomas, Sammy Alito, and Sandy O'Connor (retired but still despised)? According to several polls, the US Supreme court has become one of the most despised government institutions in modern times. While the Warren Court was vilified by the nation's superstitious morons, the current court is hated by practically every intelligent person in the country.

An ABC poll found that 80% of the public thought the Extreme Court got it completely wrong with the goofy Citizens United clusterfuck.  Yeah, I know Congress makes about 2% of the population happy, but the thing with the Extremes is that smart people of all political sides think this group of screwball characters in dresses are retarded and criminally corrupted. They have overthrown a popular national election, appointed the worst President in the history of the country while tossing off a state's right to control and count votes and cancelling more than a half-million citizens' votes. They overthrew a Congressional attempt to eliminate corporate control of national and state elections and blew up the remainder of our democracy in exchange for direct bribes (Thomas) and indirect employment (Scalia and Alito) and profit. It would be hard to find a citizen with an IQ over 110 who considers this Extreme Court to be anything but criminal.

So, I sort of feel sorry for 'em. They are crooks, incompetent, traitors, and the epitome of evil, but you have to feel a little sorry for them because they will go down in history as a principle reason why this nation swirled down history's toilet into a place on the long list of failed empires. Future historians will shake their heads and wonder how a nation of 300 million could have tolerated such corruption, incompetence, and outright evil. The sorry lot will take their place next to Nero fiddling in Rome's flaming ruins and Napoleon and Hitler marching into Russia's war-machine crushing winters. Historically they will be, to put it simply, remembered as America's dumbest national court and the reason why kids read about what ended the American Century with a whimper and a splat.