The Issues

Like any good American, I’m following the presidential primaries the same way a person pays attention to a bottle rolling down the aisle of the subway car. You know: Please don’t hit my feet and force me to take some sort of ownership. Because when you go to kick it away, everyone looks at you like you’re a slob throwing bottles around.

I guess I’m trying to say that I’m not following the primaries. I’m a Democrat, so I’m not paying attention to what the Republicans are doing. Unless Romney had pulled ahead. I would have paid attention to that because, wow. Thank god McCain has become the golden child.

As for paying attention to the Democrats, I think it was pretty clearly going to end up Obama versus Hillary from day one. Which is a tough decision because Hillary is a shrill witch and Obama is an inexperienced goof. It’s going to be one or the other, though, since McCain is a born loser. In fact, the whole Republican platform seems to be built around letting the Democrats hopelessly embarrass themselves for the next four years. Either with kneejerk Hillary in the White House pulling a Dead Zone on us or Obama in there quietly getting snowed under by fallout from Bush. Neither of them will see any support from our spineless, wishy-washy representatives in Congress. The Pelosi government has come close to making me wonder why I’m a Democrat. And any Congress with Van Hollen in it is cursed. Not that Van Hollen is a bad person (he is), I just have a personal dislike for him. He’s my Congressman. He’s also a Democrat with no pupils, a limp handshake, and a foul attitude.

When Van Hollen first ran, he held a fundraiser at the big old house where I work on the weekends – typically as the caretaker during weddings and shit. The fundraiser was just about the most boring event ever, but that’s okay because my job is to sit in a back office and watch movies. Unless the house catches on fire, at which time my job also involves calling 911. Van Hollen had a sort of green room adjacent to my office, separated by bookshelves. His attitude in there was atrocious. He was extraordinarily cold to his family, he refused to make eye contact with me… He was a smarmy shitheel. And before and after the event, when it was just the staff milling around setting up or breaking down, he treated us all like second class people. I’m a white guy in a suit and tie and he treated me like I just crawled under a fence to get into the US and was going to rape his daughter. He treated everyone like that. Ooh, don’t let the little people touch me.

I hate Van Hollen so much. I always vote for the poor sucker on the ticket against him. Hell, I vote for the Republican in the general election. My family hasn’t crossed lines like that since the Civil War. The Republicans, by the way, are responsible for that. My grandfather says a Republican vote is a vote for Satan. But I’ve worked for Satan, and his name is Van Hollen.

Anyway, I thought I’d spin by CNN post “Potomac” Primary or whatever the idiot newspeople called it to review some of the issues that are defining the race. Best to, you know, educate myself about this important event and so forth.

CNN has selected the top issues for 2008, which is nice of them. It means I only had to spend a few seconds on each one.

First up, we have “abortion.” Which is right up there with bra burning and the all-consuming issues related to the 1973 Oil Crisis. Whatever will Mr. Nixon do to save us?!?

So Hillary wants to make abortion a federal law, Obama mouses around and says he’s opposed to overturning Roe, McCain will fuck us and outlaw it. Done. Make your choices.

Next up is “economic stimulus,” whatever that means. Well, actually, it’s referring to the Bush plan to give us all special money in May. Yay! This is apparently an election issue, even though I’ve already spent that money and Bush is the one doing it. For CNN, this dovetails into economic policy lite for each of the candidates.

McCain has some good economic ideas, but his plan involves lowering the corporate tax rate. He has an okay reason for doing so but, son of a bitch, fuck the corporations. This is motherfucking America, asshole. Corporations have always been the enemy. We need to stop molly-coddling them. We should tax and sue them into oblivion. Sure, McCain’s idea is to force their tax savings towards R&D and shit that will help us but, really, do you think the corporations will do that? They hate people. You need to fucking force them at gunpoint to do shit that benefits us… And we should be doing that. And not cutting them a break. Exxon is taxed to hell and back and they still make a profit equal to the suggested retail value of South America.

Clinton wants to help the foreclosure people. Should we really help those idiots? Live by the sword, die by the sword, kids. Whatever happened to buyer beware?

Obama promises tax cuts. Yeah, you and everyone else, sweetheart. Read my lips, eh?

CNN selects “energy” as the next big issue. McCain says nothing objectionable. Nor does he say anything that makes sense. Something something about energy efficiency and independence and – OMG OMG – the people will benefit and SHARE THE PROFITS. Okay. What profits?

Hillary says she plans to “reduce electricity consumption by 20 percent from projected levels by 2020 by changing the way utilities do business.” I had to read that about five times to make sense of it. So population will increase dramatically in 10 years, and our demand for energy will also increase, but she will still reduce consumption by insisting that utility companies use double-sided copies? Hillary is all this by 2025, and this by 2030, and then this by the year one million, and then the Morlocks will come and we can stop worrying.

Obama’s even worse, promising change by 2050.

Um – hello! You all know it’s 2008, right? What are you going to do today? Pursue alternative fuel research? We have the resources, money, and manpower to do some really insane shit. Why aren’t we doing it? Or maybe, you know, working with the people to help push recycling. During World War II, we recycled everything. Now we throw bottles on a big pile and our lovely corporations refuse to use them because it costs an extra half penny to recycle a coke can and they might cut into their fucking 99% profit margin per sale. God forbid we take the gold-encrusted sandwich off their motherfucking diamond plate.

“Housing” is next. Back to the foreclosure bullshit. CNN seems obsessed. McCain comes out on top here, saying basically what I said above. The government should only get involved as a last resort. Otherwise, fuck those retards. Hillary wants to get all down and dirty and, the more she talks, the more I wonder if we’ll all be buying our houses from the Federal government in the future. Obama wants to hold the hand of each and every dimwit who dropped the ball and reward them and their families with tax breaks and bailout money. Money that comes from my pocket just so some white fuck who bit off more than he could chew can rest comfortably at night.

Iran is next. Because…they’re building a Mars-mounted death ray and we all know it. McCain says nothing, except that he’ll ask Congress before he takes military action. Gee, he must a Constitutional scholar! Hyuk!

Hillary says she’s all about working diplomatically – but she says she’ll refuse to meet with leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea for the first year of her presidency. So…maybe a no on working diplomatically? Or will she send Chelsea to bargain with all those freaks? Elect me! I plan to further isolate America and piss people off!

Obama shines here. He voted against the ridiculous thing calling the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, he’s said he wants to sit down with the freak squad in charge of the baddie countries, and he also says he’ll use the military to fuck shit up if that’s the game. Nothing like a closet hawk.

After Iran, instead of “The Bogeyman,” we get Iraq. Oh-ho-ho. The real hot button issue. What the fuck are we going to do with that shitfest dramabomb? McCain is all sorts of crazy. He’s pro-Iraq War and wants more troops in there. Hillary is also pro-Iraq War (you know, she voted for it before she voted against it, right?). She likes the Albert Speer defense – “I didn’t know that I should have known.”

I think she wants the troops out over some long period of time. Hard to tell, because she spends most of her time apologizing for herself.

Junior Obama doesn’t have to worry about voting for the war. So there aren’t any extensive apologies for voting to go into Iraq. That’s really nice and, alone, should be the deciding factor for 2008.

As far as what we should do now, he, like Hillary, supports “phased redeployment” of troops. I can’t be bothered to research what he means by that. One – I shouldn’t have to research answers to simple questions to decode them. Two – I shouldn’t have to pay attention to wishy-washy bullshit that means nothing.

Personally, I think we’re stuck with Iraq and we should be spending our time blowing more shit up. I think machine gunning children is funny.

Almost as bad as machine gunning children is “same sex marriage. ” Folks, seriously, this is about as big an issue as deciding whether or not I should upgrade my Netflix subscription during the winter months.

McCain wants to “define” marriage as being between a man and a woman, but does not want to impose laws supporting that “definition.” He’s very State’s rights about it, and supports benefits for same sex partners.

Hillary more vehemently opposes same sex marriage because she’s really just a big, old housewife. And then she repeats what McCain says as an afterthought. You know — let the states decide. Maybe. Obama is the same.

So, really, gays should vote for McCain. Obama and Hillary will fuck up same-sex marriage; McCain will go with whatever the state courts say.

Last on the CNN issues list is “taxes.” McCain used to be one of these anti-income tax types, but he’s given up that dream. Hillary wants no tax cuts ever. Unless, I suppose, you’re a victim of the mortgage thing. So you only get tax cuts if you can’t manage your money.

Obama is pretty well spoken on taxes, which means his stance is rational and boring. You want to go boring on this issue, I think. Otherwise you flop around like a fish out of water, or you end up accidentally implying that you’ll only give wealthy white people tax cuts.

I’m voting Obama. Why? Because he likes deep dish pizza and I yearn for the days where a president’s favorite food sweeps the nation. Like jellybeans. To this day, I crave Jelly Belly jellybeans. They’re great but, holy shit, a deep dish pizza president? Yes!

Hillary is known for her chocolate chip cookies, which further enforces my opinion that she’s an ultra-conservative, shut-in housefrau, deep in her heart. Also, she describes them as “pretty good.” A woman who can’t cook, and shyly doubts her only mildly successful recipe?

McCain likes shrimp. Snore. He’s also an Episcopalian, which means he’s a dangerous, ether-huffing alcoholic.

So that’s really what it comes down to. Top quality pizza versus bad cookies versus shrimp. The choice is yours, America.

Well, we’ll execute either Hillary or Obama this summer, so that’ll help. Because bad cookies still wins over shrimp. Maybe. I guess it sort of depends on what she does to fuck them up.