But one would be wrong.

No matter what we do, we seem intent – at least lately, with the rare exception – on voting ourselves right smack into a deep hole. Quit digging, already, ‘Murka! What are you thinking?

Clearly, we’re not thinking clearly.

Okay, okay, okay…so we decided it’d be a great idea to put the Grand Ol’ Tea Party back in control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Well, to be honest, we actually put the Huge Corporations and Richest One Percent of ‘Murkins in control of the U.S. House of Representatives. The Grand Ol’ Tea Party is just the front group.

But we thought this would be a good idea because we didn’t seem to like the efforts being made by President Obama and the Democratic congressional majority to fix the disasters left us by the Grand Ol’ Tea Party the last time they were in control.

Disasters…don’t like fixes…let’s try disasters again. Okay, got it. Aye, aye, cap’n…full speed into the hurricane!

Oh yea,…and we did this even though every poll indicates ‘Murkins hate the Republicans even more than they hate the Democrats. And this makes some twisted kind of sense when one considers this stat: 34 percent of all ‘Murkins blame bankers for the Great Recession; of those who blame the bankers, Republicans held an 11 percent advantage over Democrats.

So, let’s review. If indeed, these mid-terms 2010 were all about a referendum on President Obama, let’s review what ‘Murkins don’t like about what Obama has done in his first two years:

1. We don’t like federal agencies being ordered to indentify and cut wasteful spending.
2. We don’t like women getting paid the same wages as men.
3. We don’t like ending the war in Iraq.
4. We don’t like further research on embryonic stem cells.
5. We don’t like funding science and research labs.
6. We don’t like increased spending for crumbling bridges and roads.
7. We don’t like increased spending for Internet access to schools.
8. We don’t like new school construction money.
9. We don’t like closing the Guantanamo gulag.
10. We don’t like rescuing the U.S. auto industry.
11. We don’t like that the economic bleeding was stopped and a slowly restoring economy.
12. We don’t like trying to save mortgages from foreclosure.
13. We don’t like ending torture.
14. We don’t like stopping the spread of nuclear weapons around the world and attempts to account for weapons already in existence, reducing them.
15. We don’t like better body armor for our troops.
16. We especially don’t like efforts to reduce our man-made contributions to climate change.
17. We sure didn’t like the Cash-for-Clunckers program because we used up all that money almost overnight.
18. We don’t like busting Somali pirates on the high seas.
19. We sure as hell don’t want every American to have access to good health care. Oh, hell no!
20. We don’t like American Cubans being able to visit their families back in Cuba.
21. We don’t like closing down offshore tax dodges nor getting the Swiss government to cooperate with U.S. officials on tax cheats who store money in Swiss banks.
22. We don’t like ending tax breaks for corporations who move jobs to other countries.
23. We don’t like tax cuts for ourselves.
24. We don’t like lower drug costs for seniors.
25. We don’t like consumer protections against predatory credit card companies.
26. We don’t like children going to college.
27. We don’t like peace in the Middle East.
28. We don’t like more loans being made available to small businesses.
29. We don’t like women on the U.S. Supreme Court, especially Latin women.
30. We don’t like expanded health care for veterans.
31. We don’t like holding Seders in the White House and we don’t like acknowledging Muslims.

And that’s just a partial list.

In short, we really don’t like progress and we don’t want our nation to change – ever!

They get their tiddy-whities all twisted up in knots and start sputterin’ an’ cussin’ and sayin’ really smart stuff like, “I’m not a racist, you’re a racist for callin’ me a racist.”

All the while, holding a sign which reads, “Obama Agenda: White Slavery.”

It would be laughable…except it’s not.

No one knows better than the NAACP how suggesting much of the GOTeaParty rabble is caught up in the great American tradition of racism. You’ll remember how about three months ago the NAACP stirred up the hornets’ nest, including and especially the GOTeaParty propaganda ministry, Fox News, and had them yammerin’ all over themselves in defense. Futile defense but hilarious.

The GOTeaParty defense of such obvious racism and meanness has always been to claim these well-documented episodes are merely random and isolated, not really connected with the good white folks of the official GOTeaParty.

So, okay. Let’s check this out. The NAACP did exactly that and today released a report prepared by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights which documents specific and indisputable ties between many teabagger groups and white supremacist organizations.

The report describes what it calls links between tea party factions and white supremacist groups, anti-immigrant organizations and militias, according to the Kansas City Star.

Not only have tea parties given platforms to extremists, the report states, the movement is a recruiting ground for hard-core white nationalists who are “hoping to push these (white) protesters toward a more self-conscious and ideological white supremacy.”

The report’s authors examined government documents and databases, including court cases, campaign finance reports and corporate filings, according to the Star.

“This is the first data-driven report of this type on the tea parties,” said author Devin Burghart. “Understanding their membership structures was the crucial first step that enabled us to understand the complexity of the tea party movement and to be able to specify the role of racists and bigots in the movement.”

The reports findings include:

•The St. Louis-based Council of Conservative Citizens, the largest white nationalist group in the country, has both led and promoted tea party protests. Roan Garcia-Quintana, a member of ResistNet who served as media spokesman for a 2010 Tax Day Tea Party in South Carolina, is on the national board of directors for the Council of Conservative Citizens.

•Clayton Douglas, a former information officer for the New Mexico Militia, is a member of the ResistNet tea party. He uses his profile on the ResistNet website to advertise his own “Free American” website, on which he promotes anti-Semitism.

•The Wood County Tea Party in Texas is led by a woman who used to be involved with the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

•The 1776 Tea Party — also known as TeaParty.org — is led by Stephen Eichler, executive director of the Minuteman Project, an anti-immigrant border patrol group often referred to as vigilantes.

Maybe this doesn’t rise to the level of a senatorial candidate not understanding the separation of church & state or Mrs. Clarence Thomas drunk-dialing Anita Hill…but, still, it’s funny…except it isn’t.

I mean, really, it still gets cold in winter, right? So how is it that climate is changing? Okay, sure, maybe the summer of 2010 was the hottest on record in many places but so what?

And here’s the good news: nearly all the GOTea Party candidates running for the U.S. Senate believe all this talk of climate change is just a bunch of hooey. Ain’t that great?

We’re waiting for them to announce positions on the spherical nature of the globe and where they stand on the much debated question of gravity or is it simply the Earth sucks?

Many of the GOTea Party candidates seem to think the steam engine will produce a major upheaval in society! Take back America! To the freakin’ 19^th Century!

Well, okay, maybe they’re not that weak-minded. But hardly any of them want to see the obvious – the earth’s atmosphere is heating up and it’s being caused by humanity pumping up way too much carbon. Do ostriches like tea?

Here’s a sampling:

Marco Rubio, Florida, running against Democrat Kendrick Meek and independent Charlie Crist:

Rubio called Crist “a believer in man-made global warming.” “I don’t think there’s the scientific evidence to justify it,” Rubio said.

Asked whether he accepts the scientific evidence that the global climate is undergoing change, he responded, “The climate is always changing. The climate is never static. The question is whether it’s caused by man-made activity and whether it justifies economically destructive government regulation.”

You gotta love these guys who can still talk, with a straight face, about government regulations being destructive to the economy.

Then, there’s Ron Johnson in Wisconsin trying to unseat legendary Senator Russ Feingold:

“I absolutely do not believe that the science of man-caused climate change is proven,” said Johnson. “Not by any stretch of the imagination. I think it’s far more likely that it’s just sunspot activity or something just in the geologic eons of time where we have changes in the climate.”

Sun spots.

Linda McMahon in Connecticut:

“I think there’s evidence to the positive and to the contrary about global warming,” she said.

Right. Climate change doesn’t exist but professional wrestling is real.

Rand Paul, in Kentucky, threw in Osama bin Laden just for good measure:

“Now Osama bin Laden had a quote yesterday. He’s says he’s after the climate change as well. It’s a bigger issue; we need to watch ‘em. Not only because it may or may not be true, but they’re making up their facts to fit their conclusions,” said Paul…followed by the audience response: “WHAT???”

Finally, Sharon Angle running to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada:

“I don’t, however, buy into the whole … man-caused global warming, man-caused climate change mantra of the left. I believe that there’s not sound science to back that up,” she said.

Oh, okay…no sound science.

As you can see, we have the opportunity for a very enlightened U.S. Senate.

Read more here about Minister Jasiri X.

Find him here.

It was such a Grand Old Party for nearly 160 years. It was the party of Lincoln and led the way to the end of slavery. It was the party of Teddy Roosevelt and let the way toward economic justice and conservation of our natural resources.

Later in the 20^th Century the GOP become home to great leaders like Everett Dirksen, Howard Baker, Charles Percy and Nelson Rockefeller.

But after all that great tradition, the Grand Old Party has – apparently – ceased to exist. It is now the Tea Party and they like it like that.

According to a poll released last week by the Wall Street Journal, the staid old organ of the Republican Party, over 70 percent of those identifying themselves as Republicans say they support the Tea Party. Neither Richard Nixon nor Ronald Reagan would be welcomed in today’s Tea Party.

Of course, the GOP itself was on shaky ground to begin with. Since George W. Bush retired as the party’s standard bearer only 20 to 25 percent of Americans were willing to identify themselves as Republicans.

So, really, 70 percent of 25 percent isn’t really that many people.

But, nonetheless, the Republican Party is now officially the Tea Party! Just say NO! To whatever!!

But what happened to turn the GOP into the purely reactionary Tea Party? Did they run out all the moderates and progressives? Well, yes. But that’s not the complete answer.

The answer lies in particle physics: specifically in the theory of mirror matter…which suggests matter exists in the universe that is unseen and opposite currently detectable matter.

Back in the early 1900s Teddy Roosevelt led a progressive Republican Party.

TR knighted William Howard Taft to succeed him as president in the election of 1908 and Taft won easily. But Taft did the unthinkable and led the nation and the Republican Party back toward the corporatists and monopolies of which TR disapproved and against which TR fought.

The Republican Party, thought TR, should be more progressive and fight for the great mass of good, hard-working Americans.

But the progressive core of the GOP was way ahead of TR, rallied by the great progressive Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin.

TR found himself boxed out and bolted to form what would become the Bull Moose Party. (So named because TR’s running mate, California Gov. Hiram Johnson claimed he was “as strong as a bull moose.”)

The Bull Moose Party, formally called the Progressive Party, put out a platform in 1912 called, not making this up, “A Contract with the People.”

The platform called for a national health plan, social security, worker’s compensation, relief for farmers, women’s suffrage, an inheritance tax, a federal income tax, the direct election of senators (who were still at the time elected by state legislators).

The Bull Moose Party also called for citizen initiatives and referenda, strict limits and disclosure of campaign contributions and a “trust busting” plank to end large corporate monopolies.

It took 100 years and lots of southern strategy, hate & race-baiting but the mirror matter, the exact opposite and until recently undetectable matter of the GOP has taken over and converted the bull moose particles into the mama grizzly particles.

The fundamentalist, backwoods Christians coming together with the Islamophobiacs coming together with the Tea Party curmudgeons to form a coalition promoting fear and hate of just about every dang thing we can imagine.

What fun!

The Values Voters Summit came together again in Washington this past weekend and, boy howdy, were they glad to see Tea Partiers come in to embrace their paranoia because they’d been losing steam recently given the fact that a person of color has occupied The White House for nearly two years and the Rapture hasn’t happened yet.

And so it was on this particular Sunday President Obama decided to go to church to prove, once and for all, how Muslim he really is. And it was a Kenyan Socialist church to boot!

But the good news over at the Values Voters club was despite all the chasms between the fundamentalist Christians, the Islamophobes and the tax haters they could unite behind their chosen leader for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination: Mike Pence!

Yes! Mike Pence! We’re on the road now!

Wait…wait…wait…who?

You know…Mike Pence: the four-term Republican congressman from, not making this up, Rushville, Indiana. Sure, he’s a household name.

He got 24 percent of the Value votes in the straw poll for President, outpacing last year’s winner, Mike “Huckleberry” Huckabee, who only managed 22 percent of the vote.

Mitt Romney was third with 13 percent and Eye-of-the-Newt Gingrich garnered 10 percent of the Fundamentalist-TeaParty-Islamophobe vote.

Poor Sarah Palin only received 7 percent of the vote.

She probably needs to align herself more with the star of the weekend self-love fest, Delaware Republican Senatorial Nominee Christine O’Donnell, speaking of Eye-of-the-Newt sort of things… “Those fingers in my hair; that sly come-hither stare; that strips my conscience bare…”

“Bureaucrats and politicians in Washington think they should decide what kind of lightbulb we should use, what kind of toilet we flush, what kind of car we should drive,” said the GOP senatorial nominee and high school dabbler in witchcraft.

“They even want unelected panels of bureaucrats to decide who gets what lifesaving treatment. They’ll let your teenage daughter buy an abortion but they won’t let her buy a sugary soda in a school’s vending machine.”

That’s the kind of talk that makes sense…not reality…but sense to the Armageddon crowd.

And all this effort for the support of only 19 percent of ‘Murkan voters? Well, yea, but what else do they have to occupy their time?

And, finally, the U.S. Guv’munt declared yesterday the Deepwater Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is officially, “dead.”

The Gulf of Mexico, while not officially dead still ain’t feelin’ so well.

And by, “aggressive secularism,” he means Anglicans and Presbyterians and, please, don’t even bring up the Methodists!

Okay, whatever. Maybe Madam Tussaud can post Thomas Cromwell’s head on the London Bridge once again. Just for old time’s sake.

Oh yea, and by, “aggressive secularism,” he means the printing press.

Back across the pond, however, Gutenberg would be shocked and awed by the speed with which we can aggressively circulate revolt, if not outright repulsion.

Fewer than five days after appearing onstage at the VMAs wearing a meat dress (complete with meat purse she asked Cher to hold), the unstoppable Lady Gaga is taking Sen. John McCain to task on the Twitter for rumors we may try to filibuster the inevitable end to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

“SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN is attempting to stop the DON’T ASK DON’T TELL repeal vote this tuesday, with a filibuster,” Tweeted her Gaganess, only to follow up with, “All hands on deck Lil Monsters: Key senate vote this Tues. on #DADTrepeal. We need 60 senators. Call your senator now.”

She meant, “deck.”

Sen. McCain, always the Maverick, responded with, “Who is Lady Gaga and why would anyone want to wear a dress made of meat? Don’t ask me. Don’t tell me.”

“And if the Pope is going to London does that mean King Henry finally gets his divorce?”

I’m just making all that up, of course. Sen. McCain just barely remembers the 16^th Century.

But that doesn’t mean the current GOP isn’t trying to take us back there.

Judging from the candidates the TeaParty-GOP has fielded in Nevada, Kentucky, Colorado, Florida and, now, Delaware, it is clear retro-politics has once again become fashionable among the silk-stocking cowed…er…crowed.

It’s just not good politics without a heavy dose of fear and judgment thrown in. And for God’s sake, follow the advice of the GOP’s newest poster child, Christine O’Donnell and don’t try that masturbation thing at home! Leave it to the professionals.

Fortunately for us, aggressive secularism is a hallmark of this great country. That’s why we wrote that whole Constitution thingy to say a state shouldn’t be forcing religion on anyone.

But just the same, when we are ready for a new religious leader, 17 percent of us are ready for that leader to be…drum roll, please….that’s right: Glenn Beck! (At least according to a poll published by the Public Religion Research Institute.)

It’s reassuring, I know. But religious leadership is really such a fleeting mantle. Look for those numbers to change by the end of October when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert hold their competing rallies on the Mall in Washington: the Rally to Restore Sanity and the Keep Fear Alive Rally…respectively.

Look for pigeons to fly over as a sign from God.

We survive another 9/11 weekend, albeit with few book burnings and more than a few lackluster Tea Party rallies across ‘Murka.

Kanye West brings down the house at the MTV Video Music Awards with his latest hit, “Runaway,” and homage to feminine hygiene, “A toast to the douchebags.”

All this a coincidence?

Perhaps but how can we be sure? After all, freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.

Fresh from fabulous vacations, er…fact-finding trips, and re-acquainting themselves with the good people back home, the Congress People will set their sights on tax cuts and small business stimulus…not necessarily in that order.

One big showdown will come over President Obama’s desire to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

But, no, Republicans will spend their week defending the helpless rich people against these Cretin Socialist Kenyan Zoroastrians who think, for some unknown reason, the rich should pay their fair share in taxes.

While portraying a talking head Sunday on the TeeVee Box, the Orange One, the GOP minority leader in the House, the Honorable John Boehner of Ohio’s most tanned congressional district, said he might even go along with extending tax cuts for poor working chumps like you and me…but…only if the rich get to keep their Bush tax cuts.

Yea, yea…I know. It’s really had to imagine anyone defending tax breaks for the extremely wealthy but that’s the bed in which Congressional Republicans find themselves lying because even though the very rich only account for 20 percent of the population they hold 85 percent of the nation’s wealth and that’s where Republicans get most of their campaign contributions.

It’s a good strategy because the rest of us have no money left to make political contributions.

The Democrats completely missed the mark with that, siding with the poor and barely-surviving working class…what’s left of it.

If the Republicans know anything they know money and where to find it and they do a dang fine job makin’ sure the castles are protected from the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

A toast to the douchebags.

It’s all part of boom, boom, ain’t it great to be crazy in the land of the free and the home of the raves!

In an op-ed piece published in the Wall Street Urinal, former G.W. Bush hatchet man and puppet-master Karl Rove lets us know he thinks President Obama is doing a pretty darn good job in Afghanistan.

“Mr. Obama has acted impressively so far on Afghanistan,” wrote the man affectionately known as Turd Blossom, by the ever articulate 43rd POTUS.

Either the meds are finally working or this tells us all we need to know about how wrong is our currently policy in the land that time forgot.

Not that we should expect anything different, I guess, but the right-wing nut jobs are all cranked out now over the Six Flags amusement park chain setting aside a special day for Muslim families to be amused by roller coasters and log plume rides.

Hey, wing nuts! Muslims need thrills, too!

But, oh no, not according to Annie Hamilton of the Tea Party Patriots website:

“Muslim Day at Six Flags is inappropriate for a multitude of reasons and I’m saddened and shocked by the ignorance of the corporate folks and by the action that now must be taken by the rest of us,” she wrote.

According to a press release issued by Six Flags, Ms. Hamilton misunderstood.

“We are not celebrating Muslim Day,” said the Six Flags spokesman. “We’re celebrating ‘muslin day,’ and asking everyone to wear for their comfort loosely woven cotton fabric.

No, just kidding. Six Flags really will host – as it as every year since 2000 – a special day for Muslim Families, sponsored by the Islamic Circle of North America. This year, Six Flags Muslim Family Day falls on September 12, which is what has Hamilton so upset…for some reason.

“Islam is as Islam does,” wrote Hamilton.

But, according to Hamilton and her Tea Party buddies, what Islam shouldn’t do is be allowed to ride the Medusa or the Titan or the Raging Bull or the Bazarro, the later obviously being saved for Ms. Hamilton and her fellow baggers.

Who knew Phyllis Schlafly was still alive? Or relevant?

Well, apparently, she is; at least alive, not sure about relevant. But that didn’t keep her from pointing out how unmarried women are the single biggest problem in ‘Murka.

“Unmarried women, 70% of unmarried women, voted for Obama, and this is because when you kick your husband out, you’ve got to have big brother government to be your provider,” Schlafly recently told a fund-raiser for her Eagle Forum crotchety old women’s organization, according to Talking Points Memo.

She went on to make some remark about battery-operated-boyfriends but, like her, that’s irrelevant here.

Finally, ever wonder where the laziest people live in the US of A? The answer is not the U.S. Senate – the most timid, perhaps.

The laziest people live in the South, according to Bloomberg Business Week, which ranked Louisiana as the laziest state…you know, when they’re not raking oil off their beaches and marshes.

Mississippi comes in as the second laziest state followed by Arkansas in third. Rounding out the rest of the Top five in order: North Carolina, Tennessee & Kentucky.

Ha-Ha-Ha…but the Yankees at Bloomberg Business Week misinterpret the survey data! These folks ain’t lazy, they’re just getting’ ‘round to it…eventually.

And, very often, it’s the same whiners whining about both!

Grow up, people. You are not the only ones on this planet and you don’t have all the answers.

It never ceases to be amazing how white people react with such venom when anyone points out obvious racism.

Some redneck spits, “Obama plan: white slavery!”

Someone else points out the obvious.

Then some other redneck says, “Why that’s racism, accusing me of racism. You racist!”

Ha-ha-ha! It’s almost laughable, really…except it’s so sad.

The NAACP calls out the obvious racism of TeaParty chants and signs and messages and the teabaggers get their lily white noses outa joint and say, “it’s racist to call us racists.”

The next thing you know some right-wing kook with a blog and TV show puts out a video tape of a USDA official – who just oh so coincidentally happens to be African-American – and gets the NAACP all twisted up and playing defense.

By this time, the racists are demanding today’s equivalent of a lynching as sacrifice to the white power structure and the USDA official is fired.

Oh…but, gosh, who could have seen this coming? The racists edited the tape, told a big ol’ whopping bald-faced lie and now everyone is sorry and the USDA is taking everything back. Sorry. Our bad.

“They just want to stir up some trouble, it seems to me in my opinion,” said a humble Georgia white farmer of the right-wing attempts to seek retribution against African-American public servants.

“Stir up trouble.” That’s the age-old tactic for fighting back from a place of cowardice.

And racists are world-class cowards.

So are fundamentalist Christians and Bumper-Sticker ‘Murkins who get outa joint about Muslims wanting to build an Islamic Center in Manhattan, near the former site of the World Trade Towers and everyone goes postal. Sad.

Oh…but wait…this just in…

Maybe there IS something more pathetic than all that. It’s the Florida Legislature!

The Republican majority Legislature took less than an hour on Tuesday to tell former Republican Gov. Chain Gang Charlie Crist to take his proposed offshore oil drilling ban and stick down the Deepwater Horizon drill hole.

Crist, now an independent and running for the U.S. Senate, called the lawmakers to Tallahassee for the express purpose of drafting a constitutional amendment for Sunshine State voters that would have, if adopted on the ballot in November, placed a permanent ban on oil drilling in Florida waters.

No matter that over 70 percent of Florida voters favor an oil drilling ban, the Republican majority in the legislature was having nothing to do with impeding the ability of Big Oil to foul the coasts.

Well, that and the fact that oil barons gave legislators nearly $300,000 between January 2009 and March 2010…with an additional $185,000 to the Florida GOBP. (And, for the record, $77,000 to the Florida Democratic Party.)

Miffed that Crist continues to lead the U.S. Senate race even after they kicked him out of the GOBP, the Republicans in the legislature said the special session was “because of politics.” Imagine that.

Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, the leading Democratic candidate to replace Crist at the governor’s mansion called the legislature, “a complete failure.”

“Instead of action, the tone deaf Florida Legislature has been twiddling their thumbs,” she said, pointing out the lawmakers should have also addressed the severe economic hits taken by people and businesses in the Florida Panhandle because of the oil spill.