A Mischievous Question ...

Who hates the United States Government More ... Al Qaeda or the Tea Party?

Although I have to admit (unashamedly!) that I have already mailed in my vote for Patty Murray to continue to be the senior U.S. Senator from the State of Washington, I must say that Dino Rossi (her Republican opponent up here) can at least be proud of the fact that he wasn't endorsed by Sarah Palin, the former "half-governor" of Alaska who spent most of her time in Alaska trying to see Russia from her back yard ... and her Tea Party menagerie (see not-so-funny cartoon above) for the primary election.

But at this time in our history, I think it's critically important to keep the House and the Senate in the control of the Democratic Party. In a perfect world, the Senate would become filibuster proof a week and a day from now with sixty Democrats. Then again, in a perfect world, Al Gore would have been our 43rd President and there might never have been a 9-11.

Al-Qaeda and the extreme right wing of the Republican Party have sure mucked us up, wouldn't you agree?

But surely, without that [delete four-letter word] Filibuster, Congress could get jobs bills passed, give corporations huge tax breaks to keep jobs in America, pass a fair tax bill which would eliminate the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy and just try to keep up with the rest of the industrialized world.

Unfortunately the Republicans in the Senate have decided to abuse the filibuster rule in the same way a typical teenager uses the home phone for hours on end or use the family car to bus their friends to a football game in the next county (without mentioning it to the rest of the family).

Would you believe that even when President Obama and the Democrats in both Houses of Congress tried to incorporate some of the Republican's own ideas, they were summarily filibustered? Are the Republicans in Congress afraid of what the Tea Partiers and Al-Qaeda might say if the majority party in both Houses of Congress and the White House actually--oh, just for the sake of argument--were allowed to be a part of the governing process?

A great test might be for Obama and the Democrats to spoof the Tea Partiers and Al-Qaeda by pushing for an omnibus bill to eliminate Social Security, the IRS and the Department of Education while funding the building of (again, only for the sake of argument) a two hundred feet tall and fifty feet thick concrete wall around the entire Middle East--and our southern border, of course ... and while they're at it, include in the omnibus bill the unnecessary rebuilding of our Armed Forces to, say, twenty million strong while tripling our nuclear arsenal ... and maybe even rounding up (for summarily being deported to the South Pole) the estimated twenty million illegal immigrants working for patriotic American corporations and other wealthy Americans.

Would the Tea Partiers in Congress still say, "NO!" in lock step to such obvious Tea Party ideas?

What Al-Qaeda might do or say is left as a moot question.

Which brings us back to the mischievous question just below the still-not-so-funny cartoon above!


Which is which?