The day we celebrate

Of course the paper this morning contained the usual happy crap about celebrating FREEDOM as though we had either more of it or a better kind than Canada or most of Europe who have embraced the principles of Democracy and the rights of Man we seem to reject every Sunday as we yearn for the Divine right of Government.  What the day is about is political independence and independence from a government that denied us the right to Parliamentary representation it was legally obligated to provide while requiring us to identify the King's right to be king with a state church. It was about our right to fair representation as citizens, as equal participants in government regardless of wealth and importance and heredity and not about a tea tax.

As you watch the sound and fury of the fireworks, remember that the people selling themselves as patriots, the people talking about freedom in saccharine tones, really mean control by a powerful aristocracy allied with a narrow, sectarian interpretation of a certain religion.

"Blessed is the nation whose god is the Lord"  begins the full page full color newspaper insert payed for by the Hobby Lobby. It leaves off the next stanza: "the people he chose for his inheritance" which of course in that context means the Jews. It also mistranslates אשר־יהוה,  asher-Yaveh as the lord so those who think 'Jesus is Lord' will think it means them. The arrogance and the dishonesty would be amusing if the intent were not so insidious, because Our friends at Hobby Lobby, glowing like the face of Moses in their victory over secular law, have asserted their commitment to and aspiration toward a government Dei Gratia.  They assert their version of the Bible as the best source of normative morality.

The flag-bedecked page is packed with references to Supreme Court decisions from the 1830's supporting the public schools as the place to pray and teach Christianity and out-of-context quotes from the very anti-religious founding fathers like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson about the Christian Bible being the basis of all true morality. (No mention of course of the Bible backed, God tolerated institutions of wife beating and slavery and rape and genocide and banishment of non-Jewish people from holy land.)

No religion is about freedom, they are all about orthodoxy and uniformity of belief to the exclusion of other ideas and practices.  Freedom of worship is not freedom to enforce religious orthodoxy or religious law on others. No religion is about free choice, Democracy or the inherent rights of man.  No one in America has claimed the right to dictate your thoughts about divinity but religious organizations. Your prayers, your right to congregate and worship are guaranteed against the influence of  the Hobby Lobby and our constitution forbids our government to do what they insist is the right thing to do:  Establish and enforce  some form of Christian doctrine as the law of the land. If this be freedom, then freedom is slavery and the American Revolution against a divinely inspired Christian king we pretend to celebrate today was not only fought in vain, but was blasphemy and an unholy act.

The worst generation

A plurality of Americans seem to think Obama is the worst president since World War II.  I suspect a similar plurality couldn't tell you the combatants in that war or name the presidents we've had during or since, but according to a Quinnipiac poll he's the worst and we'd have been better off with Romney.

The horror.

Yes, he has no leadership qualities because the Republicans have had a stranglehold on the Government and have effectively opposed every appointment, ever action and have mobilized the worlds largest and most effective lie machine in human history to undo and to demonize what little  he was able to accomplish.

The collapse of Iraq is Obama's fault, the civil war in Syria happened because of Barack Obama, because he either he did or did not intervene and never mind that the Republicans threatened and attempted to impeach him for both courses. Are we the most uninformed, the most misinformed, the most ignorant crop of Americans since WWII?  Res ipsa loquitur.  We certainly are and of all the civilized, educated countries we're the only one still serious about believing iron age superstition and forcing others to believe it. Huge numbers of Americans believe that Obama started the recession that began in 2001.  No one seems to remember the nearly 1000 documented lies that fomented the disastrous 2 billion dollar attack on Iraq or the effect of  paying for it with tax cuts and no-bid contracts for friends of the Administration.  No, Obama is the worst because the Republicans paid to make it so, because the Republicans packed the Supreme Court with incompetent religious fanatics and invade our homes and our consciousness with all day and all night slander, fabrications and distortions.

The horror is that we brought this on ourselves and the truth is that we are the worst Americans since WWII with a contempt for justice and a contempt for the truth and we will hang on to our prejudice and superstition and delusion and greed like a drowning man clutching an anchor.  The horror is that our system of government depends on a kind of citizen we're reduced to a minority and the ability of the insurgents to incapacitate the reasonable, the educated and well balanced increases every day.  The very technology we once thought would spread enlightenment has spread lies and lies so palatible  that  we gobble them up like a starving dog gobbling shit.  It's over. We failed. It's our fault and the only desperate hope I cling to is that when America fails it doesn't take the world with it.

IN ORDER TO FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION

The Cap't has addressed this issue in his usual sharp and focused style but this is so important to our future as a nation I felt the need to repeat it.

The photo is of a pen presented to my husband’s cousin who successfully argued a case before the SCOTUS some years ago.  She was very proud of this accomplishment and we were proud for her but I wonder what she would think of the recent rulings handed down from on high.

Actually I don’t wonder, not really as I know what her reaction would be and it would be loud and scathing. How far the SCOTUS has fallen into the political mire of the far right and it’s batshit crazy denizens. Unbelievable and yet, it is happening. Better to disband this crooked den of thieves than to allow them to further desecrate the constitution and our whole legal system.

The SCOTUS most famously ruled in favor of corporations siding with Citizens United  in allowing unregulated spending sprees in political elections thus paving the way for corporations to buy politicians and unduly influence elections. Despite the new Koch Brothers' warm and fuzzy TV ads, they remain one of the biggest offenders to American patriotism.

So when Washington didn’t burn and the people did not rise up, the conservative majority of the SCOTUS became even more emboldened and have since ruled to disallow buffer zones for protests around planned parenthood type facilities that also perform abortions - while considering it constitutional to have a rather large buffer zone around the Supreme Court building (they may be needing that) and will no doubt  rule against any group challenging buffer zones around other legislative facilities such as the zone recently placed into law that keeps Moral Monday protesters away from the North Carolina State Capitol building.

And while the regional news  is broadcasting headlines about the recent case of a toddler cooked to death in a car and a newborn buried in a backyard, the SCOTUS has seen fit to rule in favor of religious exemptions for corporations in order to allow them to deny providing birth control for their employees. Women of limited means are further marginalized while more babies will be born to suffer from torture, neglect and death. Not to say that poor women hurt their babies, but this certainly closes the door on choice so they can limit the number and timing of their childbirth and pull themselves out of poverty. And those who are ill equipped and do not desire to have children will be forced into a situation where their children will be in grave danger.

I’m no legal scholar but doesn’t it seem completely senseless that the SCOTUS majority would rule that a corporation, which exists only on paper, has personhood and religious convictions? Once there is incorporation, there is no “owner”. There are company officers such as the CEO but he or she is NOT the corporation. So, where does the corporation attend church? How did the corporation form its religious convictions?

The right continues to scream that our Kenyan, socialist, leftist President is going to have us under Sheria law which, of course, has not happened in the nearly 8 years he has been in office but the Supreme Court, with just a few strokes of their mighty pen would have us living under Krazy Konservative Khristian law, completely vacating the US Constitution and they have the nerve to call liberals unpatriotic? HA!

Once again I find myself seriously exploring my options to expatriate.

SHAME! On the Supreme Court of the United States and SHAME! On us if we allow this to pass without protest and a demand that the favoring Justices step down. They have proven they cannot be trusted with our most sacred of documents, the Constitution.

Say, how many worms are in that can?

Americans like words like Freedom and Liberty and perhaps because those ideas scare us so much. We are terrified of coercion by a government we all choose but we love to coerce those who disagree with us and deny them the right to choose.  We certainly are rarely in agreement as to what it means to be a free country and I might dare to say that question is still central to political argument today.  How do we define freedom?

• " It's a free country and I can do what I want." 
• " It's a free country and I don't have to do anything I don't want to do."

Some would equate those statements, others would point out that the first is true within limits and the second isnot, but the idea that freedom carries no obligation and indeed that in a free country it never should seems common amongst extremists.  Unfortunately extremists have a stranglehold on the Supreme Court and perhaps on Congress.  The recent decision regarding the ACA mandate that employers provide insurance coverage for contraception shows that the court sides with the second example and that when it comes to the concept of  freedom of religion and perhaps freedom of speech, personal beliefs convey personal privilege, but because this is such a limited ruling, the inherent hypocrisy becomes apparent.

If  I believe interfering with the implantation of a fertilized egg is murder, it's because of a religious interpretation of murder other people do not share and an interpretation of humanity and human rights that borders on the ludicrous. Citing a definition of freedom I do not believe the Constitution shares, the God Squad on the court allows me to opt out of  having my corporation pay for insurance that might pay for a "morning after" medication and perhaps any form of contraception. That court and indeed all courts do not provide immunity for other religious or other personal opinions and specifically not to opt our of paying for wars and executions and that is proof that one specific belief is being given special rights and others are not.  This violates the constitutional prohibition against establishment.

How will we see yesterday's ruling when other religious groups decide they don't want indirect participation in executing prisoners, bombing foreign countries and a host of other activities?  Will the court have to say this opinion is privileged and that one is not?  Haven't they just done that?  Does an aversion to contraception become an excuse to opt out of  an obligation only if  it's tied to some organized faith or is a personal dislike sufficient?  That question was answered during the years we had the draft.  It was damned hard to establish personal aversion to war without showing long term affiliation with a pacifist religion and not just a pacifist philosophy.

There can be little doubt that our government is in the business of establishing religious belief and assigning special privileges, special rights to members thereof.  There isn't a damned thing we can do seeing that the independence we make a fuss about every July was so limited.  We severed ties with the United Kingdom but not with Christianity as a force that legitimizes government and those who demand and assert the "Christian Nation"  idea are no more patriots or advocates for freedom than the Hessian troops George II hired to kill our revolutionary patriots.

It will be very hard to cite this decision as limited to the case that prompted it, and there are so many worms in that can that everyone will be able to fish for whatever special dispensation from any obligation he dislikes and our reputation for sanity, if we ever had one, won't need any bit of lead to make it sink to the bottom.

Success is failure, action is inaction.

Yes everything is Obama's fault and so the only purpose of the Republican party and all it's factions is to get rid of him by any means legal or illegal, ethical or dishonest and until they do, make it impossible for him or his party or indeed our government to function.  Rush Limbaugh's "I hope he fails" still echoes and of course everything he does or is said to have done or not done is described as a failure, a blunder, an outrage.

But whose fault is it really?  They're not a majority, but the true majority is so fractured and fractious there is little effective opposition and of course there's the ignorance factor and the stupidity factor.  How else do we account for the lack of disgusted derision directed against the all day and all night advertisements for Florida Governor Rick Scott accusing his opponent of making higher education less available while simultaneously cutting scholarship programs in half?  Does anybody care?  Isn't anybody listening to the President saying to Central American families:

“Do not send your children to the borders. If they do make it, they’ll get sent back. More importantly, they may not make it.” 

If they are, why isn't anyone accusing  Louis Gohmert (R-TX) of being either insane, an America hating liar or both as he tells us Obama is " luring these children into America?" In the Republican minstrel show, you can't hear the real Obama for the shucking and jiving of the black-face Obama dancing to the Republican tune.

No, when free-market forces affect gasoline prices, it's Obama's fault, When the Shiite government Bush/Cheney installed in Iraq after destroying the country fails, it's Obama's fault and it's time to impeach him.

I have to ask myself if I really have any affection for or allegiance to this country left or whether it's just a bad habit I'm too lazy to get rid of, like leaving a bad marriage.  I have to ask myself  why I bother blogging, why I pretend it's possible to make a difference in a country hell bent on self destruction.

Never forget, never remember

Good morning Republicans and welcome to another bright new day of  washing our sins in Obama.  And haven't we been having fun preempting the Democrats from using our martial spirit, thanking every veteran for his service by damning Obama for rescuing the one and only soldier (oops, warrior ) who was treasonously disillusioned with our dear war?  Another day, another reason to impeach!

And welcome back to our neocons. Awake after their long sleep to remind us how Obama's weakness has, as we predicted, turned our faultless, perfectly arranged, positively inspiring bastion of freedom in Iraq into a flaming hell of Extremist violence. Let's greet their resurrection with a resounding chorus of  Bonzai Benghazi, Benghazi as we turn his success in capturing a perpetrator into another outrage and let's waste no time since corroboration that the attack really was a response to an Internet video works against us.

It may be another good time to toss out more chaff, more distraction: immigration, gay marriage, climate change racism and Christian rights to make sure the Libtards exhaust themselves chasing the chum while we triumph where it counts, our weapons gleaming in the bright light of a martial dawn.

For lies are the truth and truth lies and Fox is forever.  Thank you for your service. How else would we accuse the father of a war prisoner of being a Muslim terrorist or elevate a rumor to a final verdict but for Fox, the botoxed faces incapable of betraying a lie.  Chemical weapons, Biological weapons, mobile labs, nuclear weapons, centrifuges, yellow cake -- al Qaeda training camps and rape rooms: Saddam and 9/11!  not a smirk, a twitch, a tell.  No, the  America haters were wrong when they said it would be a quagmire with no end and we're right that it's now a quagmire with no end because of Obama.

The quagmire is our glory and our glory eternal, hail Bush and Cheney.  In the words of  Saint Giuliani:

President George W. Bush stood amid the fallen towers of the World Trade Center, and he said to the barbaric terrorists who attacked us, "They will hear from us." Well, they heard from us. They heard from us in Afghanistan and we removed the Taliban. They heard from us in Iraq, and we ended Saddam Hussein's reign of terror. And we put him where he belongs, in jail. They heard from us in Libya, and without firing a shot Gadhafi abandoned his weapons of mass destruction. They are hearing from us in nations that are now more reluctant to sponsor terrorists or terrorism. So long as George Bush is our president, is there any doubt they will continue to hear from us until we defeat global terrorism.

We succeeded and Obama failed and the Fox shall lie for ever and ever.  Benghazi!  NEVER FORGET, NEVER REMEMBER.

Why Benghazi doesn't matter as much as they want it to

There's a video that's making the rounds, by a guy named Bill Whittle, who is something of a tool; he's worked for conservative groups such as Pajama's Media, the National Review and Fox "News" (all of which, you might notice, are openly anti-Obama). But let's not attack the messenger - let's look at his message.


First of all, he is wrong from his opening statement. Benghazi isn't irrelevant, but it is, in fact, both trivial and a witch hunt. In his efforts to make the president look bad, he commits both the sins of omission and commission - he lies, and he ignores any facts that he finds inconvenient.

For example, Whittle tries to ignore the fact that attacks on American embassies overseas have gone on for years, by using a fascinatingly cherry-picked graphic which refers to ten attacks and sixty people dead. As Politifact has pointed out, there have been 39 attacks or attempted attacks on US embassies and embassy personnel during Bush the Younger's reign.

Of these attacks, 20 resulted in at least one death. But even if you only count attacks on embassies or consular property, you still get thirteen incidents with fatalities, not the ten he claims.

If you count fatalities from the 20 attacks, the death toll was 87 people; only if you restrict yourself to the 13 attacks on embassy personnel on embassy ground does the number of deaths drop to 66. So he was only off by 10%, right?

But that kind of margin of error is OK, in Whittle's world. Because apparently none of those deaths matter, whether they were American or not.

He makes the claim that "It is not the responsibility of the US State Department and the President of the United States to protect the lives of foreign nationals, no matter how tragic or common these attacks may be. Their job is to protect American citizens and especially Consular personnel living abroad."

That, in and of itself, is complete and utter bullshit. If a person contracts to work for the US State Department, then that person is then under the protection of the State Department, whether they are American, Iraqi, or Dutch refugees to Lichtenstein. They have agreed to work for the United States, so the United States is obligated to keep them as safe as possible.

(On top of which, it's adorable how he refers to "the responsibility of the US State Department and the President of the United States." Because the President himself should strap on a gun and personally fight the terrorists, like Harrison Ford in Air Force One. Sorry guys: just because Bush slipped into a flight suit and codpiece, he was no action hero.)

Even if Whittle is only concerned about American deaths, why is it that he only mentions one diplomat (David Foy) by name? Why doesn't he talk about Edward J. Seitz, the first State Department employee killed in Iraq? What about Jim Mollen, U.S. Embassy senior consultant? What about any of the other Americans killed?

Because they don't fit the narrative he wants to present.

Whittle presents a long and convoluted "timeline," which he apparently thinks proves that the Obama administration covered up the fact that this was a terrorist attack, and that they lied by blaming everything on an American-made online video.

What poor little Bill Whittle couldn't count on was the fact that within a week of his putting out this web-only episode of the Firewall, that same Obama administration that he hates (or more accurately, the US special forces that he masturbates over) would capture Ahmed Abu Khattala, the mastermind behind the Benghazi attack. And Abu Khattala told everyone who would listen that he had planned the attack as retaliation for that same insulting video.

It was a terrorist attack. AND it was due to the video in question. Just because you don't like facts, Mr Whittle, you don't get to ignore them. Life is more complex than you want to admit.

Incidentally, though, the special forces who captured Abu Khattala? They were working for the US military. Which, by the way, is headed by the Commander-in-Chief, President Barack Obama. If he was personally responsible for the response to the attack on Benghazi, then he is equally responsible for the capture of the terrorist Ahmed Abu Khattala. And the death of Osama Bin Laden. And untold other successful attacks on terrorists and their strongholds. You have to be consistent in these things, after all: if you're going to give him the blame when things go wrong, you also have to give him the credit when things go right.

On a side note, Whittle also wants to bring up the claim that Obama skipped the daily intelligence briefings leading up to the attack. This is a popular narrative with the Benghazi Birthers. It's based on an opinion piece published in the Washington Post, which claimed that Obama skips most of them.

Unfortunately, that's the difference between an opinion piece and an article. The WaPo fact checker eventually had to weigh in on the subject; he pointed out that Obama gets his Presidential Daily Briefing in writing every day. Bush wasn't a strong reader, so he preferred to get it in person. Every president has gotten their briefing differently: Reagan skipped his briefings 99% of the time.

(While we're on the subject, should we mention the Presidential Daily Briefing of August 6, 2001? The one that was completely ignored, entitled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US"? No. No, we shouldn't; that could be considered "using the deaths of Americans for political purposes," couldn't it?)

And finally, in his efforts to lay all of the blame for the failure in embassy security on the President, Whittle completely ignores the fact that Congress, in votes led by 100% of the congressional Republicans, voted to cut nearly $300 million dollars from the US Embassy security budget. Money that might have been used in increase their security, and could have saved the lives of all of the people killed in Benghazi.

So overall, this video ignores the facts completely, in an effort to attack the President of the United States. The only truth that we can get from this video is that Bill Whittle is a dishonest douchebag, who should be ignored by any patriotic American citizen. And by anybody with a basic grasp of logic.

L'état, c'est moi

Brent Douglass Cole has described himself as a “sovereign American Citizen attempting to thwart the obvious conspiracy and subterfuges of powers inimical to the United States.”  Yes, these Sovereign Citizen folks are few and deliberately far between but they're like an appendage of something large and pervasive and disturbing.  Cole for some reason fancies himself “a statutory Attorney General of the United States”which he'd have a hard time explaining, at least to me, since if each man is sovereign, the entire concept of a United States and a government with elected officials with any power to do anything is suspiciously self-contradictory.What he's saying is that all which makes the United States United and comprised of states is sinister and inimical to statehood and unity.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  The Sovereign Mr. Cole shot a Bureau of Land Management ranger and a California Highway Patrol officer who were investigating some vehicles at a campsite. Predictably, he got shot himself although not fatally. I'm not sure why but of course when one is sovereign, one rules, by definition which makes for problems when someone else rules too and everyone is armed.  Perhaps that explains the universal and ancient need for rules that modify and limit and define sovereignty. It's why we need some form of elections or some form of ruler to replace that personal sovereignty, it being a mess if every voter votes for himself.  Short of being totally bonkers, anyone has to admit that personal sovereignty has to be strictly limited in scope and power if anyone is to survive long enough to enjoy the wild and free life of the animals.

Now of course we'd like to portray Cole as being just plain nuts, and indeed articles about him list his preoccupation with conspiracy theories most of us don't hold.  I have to defend him on that if I want to defend my own opinions and my right to have them -- and who knows?  Conspiracies abound and even wars have been started and prolonged by real, genuine conspiracies, as you may know.  No, that's not the nuts part, or at least not the dangerously nutty part: it's the notion that one is not subject to laws, that any piece of ground is mine to rule and no one else's, and all by some nebulous right that can be defended with lethal force.  Mr. Cole seems to believe that his right to declare sovereignty the way some kid might call 'dibs' makes law enforcement illegal and laws inapplicable unless he approves of them and unless he makes them.  It's the law of the jungle, in essence.  The law of  tooth and claw if you've got them and guns if you don't. It's the law of the brat and the law of the bully and a law individuals rarely enforce successfully, thank God.

Now Civilization has a price and a price that may seem excessive to some and nay well be excessive to all but doing something about it is only possible without that odd notion of  the "sovereign citizen" and the individual's right to make or ignore laws ad libidum.  A paradox, isn't it?  But in today's ultra polarized America everything we do to deal with the fringe enrages the more mainstream and the cynical Right, the Corporate Right, the Religious Right are sure to make use of it.  Cole is now a cause and another one of many and I don't know what the hell we're going to do about it.

Fox Lies, America dies

"You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" 

asked Joseph Welch of "tailgunner Joe" McCarthy, for decades the prototype for the vicious, unscrupulous and dishonest Republican Jihadist.  The unstated but nearly universally understood answer was "hell no."

McCarthy has been somewhat de-demonized after years of propaganda and  revision, but compared to what we had in 1954, at the height of the Communist witch hunt, the wealthy Corporate Political monsters now stomping on America like something from a 50's Japanese monster movie makes those little demons as pathetic as the rubber suited Godzilla compared to the thousand foot tall  computer generated version.

But is it surprising that the one thing Foxzilla has to say about the ultra radical (too radical for the al Qaeda leaders)  ISIS, now rendering all those dead and wounded and all those spent billions nugatory, is that not only is this not Bush's fault, but Bush foresaw that this would happen if we had some weak, Muslim-smelling, black Communist incompetent like Barack Obama in the White House. 

This is how America ends, not with anything but Fox.  Of course as any non-Republican -- and by Republican I mean malicious, truth-hating saboteur -- Bush signed off on the pledge to remove troops by 2012 and of course the troops wouldn't have been there but for him and his malicious lies and greed for conquest in the first place. We might not have had the Great Recession either if  he didn't lust after the title of "warpresident" he invented for himself but just like that recession that followed his war and deregulation policies, Iraq's inevitable collapse, long predicted by Bush's opponents now becomes Obama's fault and a Republican prediction.

At this point there's little left but gallows humor and bleak despair because we're all idiots, all deranged and all preoccupied with our own petty grievances:  missing airplanes, private racist comments by old men. Preoccupied by irrational fear and hog-tied by our own propaganda we just don't care enough to recall the things of only a few years ago and while we natter about like nitwits, we take step after step toward fascism and jingoism and a government of dollars, not men.

Thank you Mr. Bush

 Our efforts against Al Qaeda in Iraq and elsewhere have been much like the indiscriminate use of antibiotics, killing off the weak bacteria and letting the strong get stronger.  The group they're now calling ISIS seems more radical and has more blind hatred for America and the West than the old guard and they're likely to "take back" the Iraq we set up for destruction, killing hundreds of thousands and putting control into the hands of brutal and incompetent people.There's not a hell of a lot we can do, even if  that most strange of bedfellows Iran joins forces with us, setting new records in the World Cup of irony.

As much as that idiot John McCain and that fool Tony Blair would like to re-invade, it's not likely to happen, although some wag might suggest that the only reason to suggest such a thing would be an opportunity to call Obama cowardly and weak.  They're already doing that and have been doing that since before he was elected.  But speaking of irony, hardly anyone seems, except perhaps for Fareed Zakaria, to be calling attention to the weak, cowardly and dishonest George W. Bush who lied us into invading a country, a recent ally, where Al Qaeda was not, that had nothing to do with an attack on our country and doing it with an inadequate force and a non-existent plan for what to do after the conquest.

This is nothing less than an inevitable continuation of Bush's War, a war we lost by starting it.  For those who remember the premises of that war: the nuclear program, the WMD, the connection with 9/11 and the presences of al Qaeda and its training camps within Iraq, it might be a sad thing to remember than none of those things so often repeated in such bellicose language actually turned out to be true and all of us who were called anti-American traitors, cowards and worse were actually right -- and that includes whole countries like France.  In a sane country apologies would have been made long ago, but this is not a sane or honest country, but one still trying to justify it's tragic mistakes and to blame it all on others. 

Al Qaeda, as we were warned, is now bigger, uglier, more insanely brutal and about to take over in Iraq.  Thank you Mr. Bush although you'll have to share the ignominy with Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, inter alia. This is the world you have given us along with an America too divided and self-hating to pay its bills and maintain itself.  We stay up nights listening to lies, inflated or invented scandals and hating each other for it. We install depraved religious idiots, fascists, anarchists, separatists, denialists and bigots in the legislature while slandering, libeling the president and thwarting every effort to deal with the mess the Republicans left us. Thank you for uniting Syria and Iraq under the flag of  death, for destroying any hope that this new century might be better than the old one. Thank you for bringing back the spectre of nuclear war in the middle east, for giving Iran and other nearby countries a good reason to build nukes. Thank you so much.