We've been so focused on all the stupid things Republicans have pulled we non-Republicans had almost forgotten how we ended up with GOP rule in the first place; we were simply Dem-Stupided out by years of Democratic Party foibles.
But the Dems sure gave us a refresher course yesterday. Hopefully this was NOT a preview of coming attractions once the Dems are back at the controls next January. Because, frankly, the nation and the world simply cannot absorb another ounce of stupid.
Three things happened yesterday that were so stupid they almost defy belief. In no particular order -- because stupid is simply as stupid does -- here's what the our alleged saviors, the Dems, were up to in just one 24-hour period yesterday:
1) Just as the price of oil and gasoline had reached levels that would finally make alternative sources, like wind, solar and (here's a dirty word) conservation, attractive, what does the Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi suggest? Forcing the price of oil back down, thereby smothering infant alternatives in their cribs.
Pelosi: Tap emergency oil reserve to lower prices
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on President Bush to release oil from the government's emergency reserve to knock down gasoline prices she says "are helping push the economy toward recession." ... Pelosi, D-Calif., in a letter to Bush noted that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been used three times before and each time the action has served to stabilize oil markets and lower gas prices. ... Action is needed "to assist consumers and strengthen the economy," Pelosi said.
Of course this had nothing to do with "helping the economy," because what ails the economy is far and beyond simply the price of oil. What Pelosi was doing with this stupid proposal was offering her party a way to tell voters in an election year, "Democrats have a plan too." Never mind that it's a stupid plan, a plan that won't lower gas prices enough to keep you from, say, losing your friggin house in foreclosure. All she was doing was throwing up some election-year BS dust.
Memo to Nancy Pelosi: Nancy, we don't need "more" oil, any more than a crack addict needs more crack. We need to be weaned off the damn stuff, and the sooner the better. Since we've repeatedly showed we are not about to take the cure voluntarily, an intervention is needed. The current oil price shock is just the tonic we need to kick the oil habit. And, just as we have the patient at the treatment center door, kicking and screaming, you want to provide more oil and lower oil prices. Brilliant!
Look, we all want change. But no one is looking to simply exchange GOP Stupid for Dem Stupid.
(Or, as voters in Louisiana put it when they change party rule; "It was Just time to turn the fat hogs out and let the lean hogs in.")
2) Then we got a second reminder of just how stupid Democrats can be with this blast from the past -- "Rev." Jesse Jackson.
Jesse managed to pull off three stupid acts in one sitting. First he decided that, since no one else would provide him with his media fix for the day, to sit down with FOX News. Then, sitting right there in that neo-fascist media outpost, he proceeded to run his mouth -- his one true talent.
Next, assuming he was off-camera and that -- even though he was wired up and cameras were pointing right at him -- Jesse assumed that his kind hosts at FOX would never do anything as underhanded as secretly taping his comments. Then he proceed to badmouth Obama. Obama is "talking down to black people," he whispered furtively to the FOX host next to him. And, Jackson added, he was was going to "cut Obama's nuts off about it."
What Jackson was grousing about was Obama's statements that black men needed to get their family acts together, raise their kids, help them with their homework, be there for them. Jackson saw that as "talking down to black people."
Well, Jackson should know, because he's been talking down to black people for decades. Jackson has made both a career and a personal fortune assuring black folk that anything that goes wrong in their lives, families and communities is entirely the fault of white folk. Personal responsibility, in Jackson's creed, applies only to white folk, and that responsibility includes everything wrong in the black community.
Which is precisely the reason why he resents Barack Obama, while paying lip service to his candidacy. Because Obama represents nothing less than a living, breathing, talking repudiation of Jackson's creed of victimology. Obama, who is not only black, but white and, while from a poor background, highly successful. Jesse Jackson has become, as someone once got in big trouble for saying, a "poverty pimp." And Obama is poaching his territory.
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