Boehner and the Boehnheads

John Boehner turns blue in the face trying to corral the tea party caucus.

Knock, knock. Who's there? Orange. Orange who? Orange you glad I didn't say: Argo ... yourself?

Once again, we have one situation that we can’t do a cartoon about, or at least one that we can’t get a funny take on. I’m referring, of course, to those idiots down in Florida who “tried and convicted” a Qu’ran and then burned it at the stake. Ahhh, we’ve come a long way since the Middle Ages. Since this didn’t get enough press and outrage from the Muslims around the world, our pal Hamid Karzai made sure everyone knew about it by rending his garments, pouring ashes on his head and demanding justice for the desecrators. Knowing full well that there is no law they can be charged with and that the US of A was certainly not going to extradite anyone to face “justice” someplace else for something that happened within our own sovereign borders. And of course, another bunch of idiots from the peaceful religion of Islam, having heard what happened via our good pal in Afghanistan, in order to put the lie to Terry Jones’ and company’s “indictment” of the book, have run around rioting and murdering people. There’s nothing I could draw that could outdo the collective idiocy occasioned by this idiotic asshole down in Florida, so I’m not even going to try.

I’m going to turn to our other good friend, John Boehner. The Republican party, as you know, has nominal control of the House of Representatives, making our national Boehner Speaker of the House. This means that John has the unenviable task of trying to make sure that bills actually get passed by said august body. The problem for John is that the Republican caucus is actually two caucuses: the official Republican one and the Tea Partiers. This means he has almost as big a problem as the Democrats had getting anything done with the Blue Dog caucus in their party voting against anything that wasn’t conservative enough. And boy. are you going to have a problem making something conservative enough for the Tea Party group.

Seems that most of them are new to this new occupation of politicking and have no idea that it means the art of negotiation and compromise. Now, you could say that about the Republican Party in general–and you’d be right–but most of the real politicians under the tail of the elephant realize that as long as you grandstand about the “big issues”, you can actually get everything else done without a whisper. Not our teabaggers! At least one of them has said that he isn’t gonna vote for any damn budget that doesn’t “defund Obamacare.” And the rest of them have similar demands. And like El-Orans in the desert, they are crying “NO PRISONERS!” as they charge into the august chambers of the august body. And it ain’t even August!

Now John knows that sooner or later, they need a budget. The WORST thing he could possibly do with the economy in its weak condition, excuse me, robust recovery (at least in the financial sector), is shut down the government. There is no consumer, no single employer more important, and to shut it down for even a few days could create such a downturn that even the wealthy could see a dent in their portfolios. He could pass a budget with enough compromises for some Democrats to come on board–but that would be a sin in the Tea Party’s eyes. He could try to explain to the Tea Party that THEY need to make some compromises…but then he’d be seen as a traitor also. As the saying goes (attributed to Mark Twain), “Never try to teach a pig to dance. It just wastes time and annoys the pig.” So somehow, he’s got to figure out how to pass a budget without Democrats and possibly without a whole buncha nominal Republicans. But a lot of Tea Partiers actually think shutting down the government would be a good thing so John might feel that he’s going to be talking himself blue in the face in the next few days.

Or maybe just green.

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Marshmallows, anyone?

We'll show them Muslims they can't hate our freedom!

Once again, the anniversary of 9/11 is upon us and once again, it’s time for good old-fashioned idiocy to commemorate it. Leaving aside the fact that we have fought two wars against two countries that had nothing to do with it, the American thing to do is to blame an entire religion for the acts of 19 lunatics. After all, Islam isn’t a real religion, it’s just some whacko death cult, isn’t it?

So some asshole preacher, Terry Jones, has decided that the best way to honor the lives of the unwitting martyrs of 9/11 who died because all Moslems hate our freedoms is to use that freedom to hold a good old-fashioned book-burning of the Moslem holy book. Yessireebob, we’re gonna practice our freedom of speech by kicking freedom of religion down the crapper. After all, freedom of religion means you have the right to worship Jesus in any way you want–even Catholics! Joseph Goebbels would have approved!

On the other hand, it’s the first time both the Tea Partiers and Afghans have united in calling for President Obama’s demise. Now that is truly a hands-across-the-aisle moment!

Well, it seems that General Petraeus thinks that holding this wiener roast MAY actually hurt our chances of success in those wars which we won BUT ARE STILL GOING ON. How DARE he disrespect our troops in this way! Let’s all show our troops respect by showing our contempt not just for our enemies, but for any friends we might have had in the Middle East. Because we’re fighting a mighty Crusade to rid the world of Mohammedans and rebuild the Temple so the world can end in a fiery blaze of Glory. HALLELUJAH!

Or something like that.

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