12 Days of Christmas Scorn: Day 12 -- The Year That Couldn’t End Soon Enough Edition

As we all know, government can't do anything right, except --

by Noah

1. KOOK SLOGAN OF THE YEAR AWARD

“The Government Can’t Do Anything Right.” I've already covered wingnut signage, but this not-so-well-thought-out piece of wingnut gibberish was trotted out incessantly over the past year across the board by an endless parade of Teabaggers, sniveling rodentlike congresscreeps, and their robot puppet legions in the media. As we all know, it was used as an all-encompassing “reason” to oppose healthcare and insurance reform ("government healthcare" to the brain-cell-challenged), particularly the concept of a public option or anything that might have a prayer of making the insurance companies at least act honorably.

Social Security and its supposed problems are often trotted out as part of the anti-public-option zombie mantra. The fact is (oh no, not facts!), though, that the Social Security Administration has never missed a payment. You apply, you get -- works for me! They’ve done it for almost 80 years now. Not many businesses can match that. You see (if you want to), government can work. I know, you’re probably thinking that it didn’t work so well in recent years. Well, all these lousy presidents in a row will do that.

Regulations have been shredded. Jobs have been moved out of the country so that our corporations can avoid laws that police child trafficking for slave labor -- you know, issues and things like that. Dubya gutted the Food and Drug Administration, and the next thing you know, spinach doesn’t turn you into Popeye the muscleman, it turns you into a corpse. Mining companies are told not to worry about the enforcement of safety laws, and miners die in cave-ins. With things like that, I suppose one could get cynical about government. Hell, I didn’t even mention Iraq or a so-called president not reading memos that were vital to our security. But Social Security works, so why hold that up as an example? Its only funding problems are due to irresponsible looting of funds to pay for pet projects and pet wars. That can be fixed just by ending the looting.

Just imagine if McCain had won, and Phil “Let’s Privatize Social Security” Gramm was Treasury secretary. Geithner’s bad enough. Social Security tied to a down market? I don’t think so! So government can do things right. Do away with the deficit-causing Bush tax cuts for the top two percent, and it will do even better.


2. THE SET A THIEF TO CATCH A THIEF AWARD

To President Barack Obama, for choosing Timothy Geithner for his, and our, Treasury secretary. I realize that when President Obama took over, it was like that FBI agent in Snakes on a Plane, trying to save as many people as he could in a seemingly hopeless situation not of his making. So the theory is, get a guy who was at the height of Wall Street when all the criminal activity was rampant. Who knows better where the bodies are buried?

But Timmy G never started a business or had to meet a payroll, and along with Harvard moron Larry Summers, he probably didn’t even know anyone who had. That’s the biggest problem with government officials and senators. They only hang out with the upper-class-twit crowd. Few of them have any experience with the worry of making ends meet, or even worrying about the future. So they don’t. They simply don’t know what life is like for most Americans, nor do they care, as long as the K Street ca$h is flowing their way. The way they see it, the K Street Bribery Squads are their constituency. Let’s face it, they certainly don’t spend much time even being aware of people who make less than a million a month, or at least a year, so how the hell are they going to be sensitive?

So it has become a case of the fox guarding the henhouse, all made legal by the foxes. This is the kind of situation that should make someone like Barack Obama special, if only he remembered where he came from.


3. THE IT'S THE LITTLE MAN THAT MAKES THE DECISIONS AWARD

To John Edwards. He had the smarts. He had the hair. He had the charm. Talk about misusing assets! He also had a great wife behind him. He actually was a contender. Now he’s a bum. He coulda been president. At the very least, he would have made a hell of an attorney general. Loser.


4. THE GOLDEN JACKASS AWARD

No award ceremony would be complete without a lifetime achievement award, and this is mine. The Golden Jackass is given to someone who has dedicated his or her entire life to nihilistically spreading a virus of hate, through such qualities as snobbery or disdain based on class or ethnicity, divisiveness, sociopathy, and/or general psychosis. The award is given to someone who may not be heard from so much anymore, someone who doesn’t matter so much anymore, someone whose 15 minutes of fame are up, or someone whose shtick just doesn’t get over as well anymore, yet who has blazed a path of toxicity for others to follow and build upon before the insecurities of his/her inner child took over and the public began walking away; walking on down the avenue to see the next car wreck of humanity.

This one’s for you, Ann Coultergeist. Yes, this one’s for you. We don’t care if you are a man or a woman or a little of both. Your mindless cackle will still sound the same as you spend the rest of your days in continued physical and mental decay straitjacketed in your private room at the Sean Hannity Memorial Hospital for the Deranged, drawing self-portrait stick figures on the floor with your snotty nose. Be a good little whatever-you-are and stop the bitching, or we’ll throw you in with the others -- you know, those people who just aren’t up to your bigoted and hateful standards. Do you see all of your hate and bile taking its toll as you gaze narcissistically for hours in your shattered mirror? We do. When you finally croak, we will take you out and stake you up in a giant cornfield in Nebraska. You will have finally found productive work for which you were suited all your life. Not even the children of the corn will venture near.


5. And finally, the moment you've been waiting for:
THE ASSHOLE Of THE YEAR AWARD!

Ah, so many to choose from! Everyone at Fox? Rupert Murdoch himself? Ken Lewis? Possible, but I happen to think that this award should go to a cretin who has the position and the power to more directly do good but willfully, and with great contempt for others, chooses to do the opposite. It should go to someone who might as well be a horrid disease that escaped from a petri dish in a top-secret lab somewhere. Rahm Emanuel? The $enator whose very name rhymes with asshole, $en. Chuck Grasshole? "Joe the Bummer" Lieberwhore? Ben Nelson? The cultists of the C Street Cell?

You, dear reader, can give it to all of them if you like, but to me one man rose above all others, and he will be the lightning rod for my anger. One man started the demise of true healthcare and insurance reform. One manthug both included his mistress on a list of candidates for a U.S. attorney post and made sure to abuse his bought-off power to assure that single-payer was off the table. Who says these clowns can’t walk and chew gum at the same time? One man tyrannically used his bought-off power to prevent the words even being mentioned in his presence. Ladies and gents, the man whose name now and forever will mean "asshole":

Max Baucus.

When Majority Leader Harry Reid called a press conference to announce that the Senate plan was ready, right down to the last loophole, the gutless Baucus was nowhere to be seen. He dared not show himself, using his mother’s health for an excuse not to be there while so many other perpetrators of the farce were. Well, Max, I’m sure her claims don’t get turned down, do they? Oh, wait. She’s on a government single-payer kind of plan called Medicare, isn’t she? Future generations of children might well use "Baucus" as a playground curse word.

Future generations of children might have their mouths washed out with soap for shouting his name in frustration or anger. And future generations of children will grow up with substandard health care because of this money-grabbing, bribe-taking piece of crap who has tarnished the very meaning of being a senator and who dishonors the building he works in. It’s only fitting that this year’s Scorn Awards begin and end with Max Baucus. Somehow I don’t think generations of American soldiers spilled their blood on faraway beaches for this.


AFTERWORD:
2009, THE YEAR OF STONE-DAMN-CRAZY

So that’s 2009 in a nutshell. Here’s hoping that we get through this winter of our discontent. I know some worthy people went without an award, and you’re welcome to grant your own. But, like I said in the beginning, I’m just not one of those everybody-gets-a-trophy guys. What I would like to see is that every politician who isn’t a progressive should get a primary challenger who is.

We still have freedom of speech, no matter what the likes of the firm of Prejean & Palin says, even if that free speech falls on ears that ignore our pleas. Insane people walk among us. Corporations even give them TV shows. When I was young, parents worried about young people falling under the spell of sicko, Svengali-like hucksters like Charlie Manson. Now the tables have turned, and younger people have to worry about their parents falling for the spell-weaving of TV charlatans who have gone way beyond slimy evangelists conning little old ladies into sending them a big check.

You can turn on the TV and see insanity, hate, or contempt in the eyes of the boob on the screen. The eyes are the same crazy eyes, and the stories of an evil power and racial fears are quite the same as they were 40 years ago. The difference is that the Glenn Becks of the world have a much bigger audience than Manson ever dreamed of. Ain’t technology grand?

The holiday season is now over. Tonight will be the 12th Night. War isn’t pretty. It’s sad that the biggest war is right here at home. In the Repug world of Rove and Limbaugh and Hannity and Beck, reindeer really do know how to fly, not just pigs. And, both Rudolph’s nose and Santa’s coat are red, you know.

Finally, I’d like to offer the following clip as a testament to a man who actually had the courage to look out for his constituents. Sadly, he left us recently, and even more sadly, his question still screams to be answered. “Where does the greed end?”



Oh, and Sean, we’re still waiting for you to do that waterboarding thing you committed to.


THE SERIES

Day 1: Con Men, Grifters, and Outlaws Edition
Day 2: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same Edition
Day 3: Media Manipulators and Seditionistas Edition
Day 4: Teabaggers Edition
Day 5: A Circus of Horrors
Day 6: Toys in the Attic Edition
Day 7: A Circus of Horrors, Carny Row Edition
Day 8: Utter Freak Show Edition, Part 1
Day 8: Utter Freak Show Edition, Part 2
Day 9: The They Have a Right to Remain Silent, and I Wish They Would, Forever Award
Day 10: Dumb and Dumber, with a Huge Glop of Arrogance Award
Day 11: Bad Vibrations Edition
Day 12: The Year That Couldn’t End Soon Enough Edition

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