Idiocracy

Hockey is over for at least two weeks and football is still almost three months away. Good thing I’ve got the World Cup to save me from watching baseball. My completely uneducated prediction, based solely upon the highlights I’ve seen so far: Argentina vs. Germany in the final.

A programming note off the top. I am through talking about oil. Let me know when the well is capped. At that point we might have something to talk about again.

Oh South Carolina. How do we love thee. What other group of philandering, scheming and racist politicians could make us forget - even temporarily - about the whack-jobs in Arizona. Last Tuesday, former South Carolina state legislator Vic Rawls was defeated in the Democratic senate primary by one Alvin Greene, a previously unknown, middle-aged, unemployed military veteran with a pending obscenity charge, living in his father’s basement. Better yet, in a barrage of interviews since his victory, Greene seems completely incapable of articulating his position on any issues, failed to demonstrate even rudimentary knowledge of any issues, and at times, appears unable to maintain a coherent conversation. He spent no money on advertising, raised no money, did little to no campaigning, yet somehow defeated a seasoned - albeit little-known - state politician. How? The best explanation anyone can come up with is that his name happened to come first on the ballot. That’s right. The alphabet handed Alvin Greene a 20 point primary victory. Sigh.

Is it possible Alvin Greene defeated Vic Rawls because voters determined Greene’s stance on the issues to be superior to that of Rawls? Sure. Is it likely? About as likely as Paris Hilton wearing underwear out in public. Is Alvin Greene to blame for this farce? Not really. It’s hard to fault a guy down on his luck for attempting to make something of himself. Even if that something is a complete, unadulterated fool. Typically, the political system counts on the electorate to weed out the Alvin Greenes of the world, ensuring that only reasonably qualified candidates make it to the general election. But obviously, South Carolina voters are idiots. This wasn’t a contest for county commissioner or city council stenographer. This was for a shot at the United States Senate. Ineffective as it may be it’s still a pretty big deal. It should have occurred to... well, everybody, that if the only thing you know about a candidate is his name, the responsible thing to do might be to leave that segment blank. What’s that saying? The problem with common sense is that its not all that common?

Which brings us back to Arizona. South Carolina’s got nothing on you. Not satisfied with demanding to see citizenship papers from “suspicious-looking (brown) people,” firing English teachers with accents, eliminating ethnic studies courses and verbally abusing third-graders painting a mural, legislators in this backward wasteland are attempting to draft legislation to deny citizenship to children of illegal immigrants born in the United States. This, of course, is in direct violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

In spite of everything they claim the Constitution means nothing to these yahoos. In their opinion, only two Amendments, the Second and the Tenth are worth the paper they are printed on. The rest can burn in hell with their liberal defenders. In order to enforce any law they would pass to strip citizenship from American-born children of illegal immigrants, Arizona would first have to assert state control over immigration, which it is Constitutionally (there’s that word again) prohibited from doing so. Then, they would have to successfully make one of the following arguments; babies (newly born human beings existing outside their mother’s womb) are not persons, the definition of the word “born” is something other than, “brought forth by birth,” Arizona is not a state of the Union, or that it is not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States government. All of those arguments are obviously preposterous. But sound reasoning does not seem to be something at which Arizona politicians excel. Instead their twisted drive to foster and sustain fear and loathing among a certain group of people toward another group overrides even their stated reverence to the founding documents of this nation. At this point it’s so pathetic I’m running out of adjectives to describe how stupid these scenarios are. Maybe we can cut them loose, release them back to Mexico or something.

Finally, according to a two-year-old U.S. geological report, Afghanistan is sitting on what might be a trillion dollars of untapped mineral wealth. Oh yay. Now we can never leave that god-forsaken desert.