I Had to Concede

Scottish woman visiting police station
to retrieve a lost purse, arrested
for the cocaine it contained.

I have finally had to concede. I called my friend in Arizona and confessed that I thought he was right, politics in Arizona is definitely worse than politics in Idaho. We have had this ongoing dispute for several years. It came about because we are about the same age, both taught in Universities, and both retired at the same time several years ago, and both can be broadly designated as “progressives.” But for reasons I will not bother you with I ended up living in North Idaho and he ended up living in Arizona, both extremely conservative states with Republican dominated state legislatures, arguably to the right of Attila the Hun, certainly to the right of common sense and sanity.

For years we have amused each other with reports of our respective politicians and state legislatures. Here in Idaho we had our famous Larry Craig, often referred to as “The Senator from Boise Cascade.” Of course he became far more famous as “Wide Stance,” when he was arrested for soliciting sex in the Minneapolis Airport’s men’s room. He insisted repeatedly that he was not “Gay,” to which someone agreed and said he just liked kinky sex in bathrooms. In any case this was a source of considerable amusement. Then I reported that one of our state legislators actually suggested we change the Idaho Constitution so the state would have no responsibility at all for education. This was during one of the endless discussions of how it is we don’t need to have any education in Idaho, resulting in years of serious neglect of public schools and Universities here. This has resulted in numerous lawsuits involving how education is funded (or not funded) that to this day continue. Now we have Senators Crapo (the name itself offers a certain amusement) and Risch. All three of these Senators apparently follow the principles of an earlier Idaho Senator, Weldon B. Heyburn, who when asked about conservation (that is, not cutting all the timber as fast as possible) famously replied, “Let succeeding generations look out for themselves.”

The Arizona Senators, Jon Kyl and John McCain, are themselves an endless topic of mirth. Their antics have ranged from the utterly idiotic to the overwhelmingly hypocritical. McCain in particular has been an endless source of amusement, especially when he teamed up with Palin for the John and Palin show. In addition to not knowing how many houses he owns he has distinguished himself by flip-flopping on virtually every issue he has ever encountered. Boasting he has never proclaimed himself a “maverick,” he somehow maintains this posture in spite of his often repeated claim of such status, and the title of a book he once published. He has single-handedly raised hypocrisy to a level never before obtained by a public servant (or anyone else, for that matter). And of course we are forever in his debt for introducing us to Silly Sarah, the least qualified V.P. candidate in the history of the U.S., who has gone on to parlay McCain’s lack of judgment into a fortune. My friend and I have traded stories of our respective politics for quite some time. It has been both great fun and also very depressing. When he informed me that some people he met in Arizona wanted him to go with them to fire machine guns, “for relaxation,” I knew we were operating in parallel universes. And we do share many things in common: the conviction that Obama is going to take away all our guns, he is going to stop us from fishing, he is a socialist/communist/fascist/Muslim/Kenyan/anti-Christ from outer space who is going to kill us all with death squads, foolish lawsuits about health care, stuff like that.

Idaho has long prided itself on being the reddest of the red states and has good reason to claim such fame. But Arizona has never been far behind. They have now, however, surged far ahead of Idaho in outright idiocy. Not only have they recently passed a law making it legal to carry concealed weapons without a permit, they are in the process of passing one that will force all future Presidential Candidates to produce for them a birth certificate, an idea so intrinsically idiotic it makes one wonder if any of them has graduated from kindergarten. You also have to wonder what they will do when the next Presidential candidates refuse, “war,” perhaps? The worst, however, is a pending bill that makes the Third Reich look pretty reasonable. Arizona Police will be required to demand “papers” from anyone they deem suspicious. It is well known who the suspicious people are going to be. The implications of this bill, if it is not vetoed by their Governor, are simply immense. It will involve taxes, police protection, morality and the church, endless lawsuits, to say nothing of usurping the Federal Government’s responsibility for immigration. It will certainly be a source of amusement for morbid spectators such as my friend and myself. It is this recent spate of activity in Arizona that has made me concede. Even Idaho cannot approach this in its sheer insanity. I had to admit, Arizona wins hands down when it comes to the utter nonsense of Republicanism. I do not despair completely, however, the last cards may not have been played, Idaho may come up with something equally or more ridiculous. Walt Minnick, our so-called Democratic Representative, who is really a Republican in Democratic clothing, has recently been endorsed by the Tea Party. I don’t know what this means, but I’m pretty certain it is going to be most amusing before it plays out. To get an endorsement from the Tea Party I’m sure you have to be pretty weird. I wonder what they know about Minnick that the rest of us don’t?

Just when you think things can’t get any worse, they do. Witness the Republican running against Harry Reid in Nevada, Sue Lowden, who makes Michelle Bachmann appear almost sane. There is something about the Republican Party that seems to have an attraction for really dumb blonds.

LKBIQ:
In politics, absurdity is not a handicap.
Napoleon Bonaparte

TILT:
There is absolutely no way eggplant can be cooked to make me like it.