I Feel Your Pain

by Father

"After Obama gets finished raising my taxes," the guy said to me at a recent Christmas party, completely unsolicited, I might add.  Caught off guard, I mumbled something like "I think he's really a fine man," and slinked away.  In the old days I would have uttered an obscenity, but the new me is trying really hard to not go ballistic with these people.  After all, we won, didn't we?

My new, prepared response (uttered in my best sympathetic tone), "I understand.  I know how you must feel," really throws them off balance.  Their puzzled response is something like, "What do you mean by that?"

Well, see, it's like this:

Republicans believed, after the 2000 election, that the Liberal cause was dead, Conservatives would rule government for the next forty years and the Democratic Party would be a relic of the past.  Instead, it looks like the opposite could be true, although I'm realistic enough to know that forty years is an infinity in political years.

All the Country got from Republican domination was the Bush Doctrine (bomb early and avoid the rush), a disastrous and seemingly endless war, eight years of scandal (Abramoff, Larry Craig, pedophile/prostitute-loving Congressmen), domestic surveillance, tortured prisoners of war, unlimited imprisonment, worldwide hatred and humiliation, and last but not least, the BANKRUPTCY of America.

So now when "these people" approach me with their in-your-face accusations about what Barack Obama is going to do, it's so easy to say, "I feel your pain."  If they persist, my follow up is, "You must be totally humiliated/disillusioned/discouraged (choose one) by the last eight years."  If they persist, I just repeat, "I really have a lot of empathy/sympathy, etc. for you."  There are about ten different ways to say this and usually they will go away and leave me alone.

God I feel so enlightened.  No more political arguments.

Hey, maybe the" Greedy Old Party" still thinks the 2012 elections will turn things around for them.

I can see it now:  Sarah Palin accepting her nomination for the presidency with yet another infant in her arms and performing the ritual "Passing of the Baby," standing beside her pregnant daughter, Bristol (with her fourth child), who will be accompanied by fiancee Levi (no date has been set for the wedding) and Levi's just-released-from-prison-on-a-felony-drug-conviction mother.  Palin will be campaigning on a Family Values/Forgiveness platform.

So all is not lost, you poor, downtrodden Republicans.

Dear Osama

by Father

Dear Osama:

I hope you don’t mind my calling you by your first name.

Thanks for the nice congratulatory letter to President Elect, Barack Obama.  Hearing from your buddy al-Zawahiri must have made his day.  By the way, how long did it take you two to dig up that old racist expression “house negro?”  Pretty tame rhetoric from you but nasty nonetheless.

So, here we are just about 10 years out from your first big deal massacre in Tanzania and Kenya and almost eight years since your Michael Angelo moment: the hit on ground zero in New York. 

Osama, I’ve been thinking about the big picture; your return on investment; efficiency of operation; potential for future growth.  All that stuff that our brilliant American investment brokers kick around and, I must say, the bottom line does not look too good.

Here’s my fairly crude, fairly random sampled, fairly unscientific take on this whole terrorist thing you’ve had going on, Allah only knows, for how long.

I’ll start with the Embassy bombings:  12 Infidels and 212 locals killed.  (Highly unscientific assumption:  the majority of locals were Muslim.)

Then came 9/ll/01:  4,000 Infidels killed (round numbers) and zero Muslims.  This lead to the invasion of Iraq by the Bush/Chaney cabal so I’ll factor in the number of deaths as the result of the Iraq war. (After all, you are as much to blame as Bush/Chaney.) Number of dead suicide bombers: ____ (you fill in this blank.)  Number of dead ordinary citizens (assume 90% Muslim):  500,000 (ballpark figure):  Number of Infidels killed (American soldiers):  more than 4,000.

I won’t even get into the Madrid Train bombings, the London Subway bombings, and terrorist events, small by comparison to the others, but the kill ratio of Muslims to Infidels is around six times.  Now, I don’t have an MBA, but even I know that this is a classic example of a failed business plan.

We have just elected a new President who seems to be a brilliant man, of excellent moral character, who genuinely wants to make the world a better place for everyone, including the Islamic world.  In light of your really, really bad track record, I would like to make a suggestion:  Why not “hang it up?”  After years of living from hand to mouth, from cave to cave, enduring unspeakable hardships, not to mention poor hygienic conditions, why not close down your business and give Mr. Obama a chance to improve the human condition?