Our National Pass Times:

We need new sports.  Our National Pass Times, over the years, have devolved into three immense disasters.  We, as fans, are the ones enabling all of this.  But I don’t think it is necessarily because we love Football or Baseball or Basketball so much that we would spend money on the sports unconditionally.  I think it is because of boredom.  I think it is because of lack of competition.  What else are you supposed to watch at 1 o’clock on Sunday afternoons between August and January? 

Why hasn’t anyone invented any real, new sports in the last 500 years?   Arena Football is not a new sport; it is just people playing football on way to small of a field, it’s horrible.  UFC has made its way onto the national stage nicely, but it is not a format you can challenge the NFL, NBA or MLB with.  I guess you can say NASCAR is right up there with the big three leagues but it really caters to a more specialized demographic.  The same thing with PGA Golf, you can’t expect a real diverse fan base there.  The Daytona 500 and the Masters will never captivate the entire nation the way the Super Bowl does every year.

So let’s take a look at the current state of our big three leagues that everyone loves so much.

The National Football League:

The idea of millionaires, fighting with billionaires over nine billion dollars is not an idea that sits well with a country still reeling from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.  One thing that we must keep in mind is that, as usual, the richer of the two sides, the billionaire owners are the ones locking out the millionaire players, so this is much more the owners fault then the players.  

We have to look at the culture as a whole.  If the culture and personnel currently employed within the NFL ever went on to create any other sort of business, it would likely not be able to stay afloat for more than 15 minutes.  Basically you have a collection of some of the richest people in the world who have bought football teams, most of the time, not because they love football but because they want something to brag about at the Yacht Club to their friends.  These teams are looked at as an investment to the owners, not as a business.  There is a big difference. 

Then the owners bring on board a massive supporting cast of characters that actually run the day to day operations of the team.   Then the massive supporting cast is tasked with collecting, what they see as the least stupid professional football players that they possibly can.   And this is where the system breaks down, culturally.

The football players view their sport as a business because their union and agents sat them down in a chair and told them that it was a business.  Meanwhile, the owners look at the whole thing as an investment for themselves, like a 250 million dollar savings bond.   The players, who think they are business people, demand financial transparency from the owners which actually would make some sense, if the owners were business owners per se.   But the owners look at themselves as 32 guys who all happen to own football teams, not 32 business owners of football teams.  So it kind of makes sense that they feel as though they should not have to divulge their financials to a bunch of football players.   After all, if you buy a share of Google, the Google employees don’t demand to see your finances in order to determine if you are paying them enough or have purchased what they think are enough shares.  That would be ridiculous. 

Basically, this is the kind of perplexing stalemate that will always ensue when rich people start to argue about things.  It’s never about logic and reason and what is good for the end product or industry, it’s about what’s good for me right now, and how many different courts and lawyers do I have at my disposal to get it.   I expect the arguments between the players and owners to last exactly as long as it takes for this thing to really start costing them money in which case, we will have football again, maybe a shortened season, but it will happen. 

And we will watch the games and go to them and spend money at them because the majority of us are way too dumb to understand that the NFL players and owners are treating us all exactly like Pakistan treats the United States.  Just keep giving us our billions and we promise to deliver something to you someday.

The National Basketball Association:

While I will miss NFL football in the unlikely event the lockout lasts into the season, I hope the NBA just folds as a result of their impending lockout this summer.  What an absolute garbage product that league has turned into, in less than 10 years.  I hope the NBA players think they hold as much power as the NFL Players Union and demand all sorts of unreasonable crap out of the owners.  I then hope the owners fire all of the current NBA players and go get new ones if they choose to continue owning their teams.   This is one situation where I am counting on rich people to do the right thing and stick it to the players as much as they possibly can, to the fullest extent of the law.

Never in my life have I seen a sport, with the exception of modern fixed boxing, that relies so heavily on media hype, then the current NBA.  Every playoff game this year has been built up to be some sort of epic battle between two teams with such storied history that you won’t even be able to watch it without smashing your television in amazement.  Then you tune in for 5 minutes, just to find out that you are watching the Bulls play the Heat in some sort of sporting event that loosely resembles organized basketball.  Every single player is screaming at the referees every time they commit some sort of a foul, nobody has made a shot outside of three feet from the rim in like 30 years, players named Joakim Noah are yelling anti-gay slurs into the crowd, and half the players aren’t even really trying to play well for various personal and financial reasons.  The broadcast that you are watching, if you are one of the lucky people who actually get TNT, is full of wonderful, top notch human beings like Marv Albert and Charles Barkley who between the two of them have slept with ever male and female prostitute in America.

Nobody has made any sort of layup in the last 10 years without immediately screaming at the top of their lungs into the stands like the Incredible Hulk after he smashes a tank.  As though making a layup in basketball is such a difficult prospect, such a momentous achievement that we should all act like we have just conquered the Roman’s at the battle of Carthage after doing so.  Combine this shit product with the fact that only 8 different franchises have won NBA titles over the past 30 years and your sport is basically swimming through a world of crap. 

With any luck, the owners will lock out the players for so long that the majority of the league will be contracted, leaving the 6 relevant NBA teams that are left to duke it out with each other, once a month on Pay-Per-View, much like the current UFC.  I then hope the NHL takes over for the NBA in the cities where NBA teams were contracted.  At present, the NHL is a far superior and reasonable athletic product.  

Major League Baseball:

If you watch ESPN, you probably think that Major League Baseball consist of four teams, The Red Sox, Yankees, Mets and The Phillies.  The Mets, while finishing dead last in the NL East last season had more games broadcast nationally on ESPN then the Rangers and Giants combined.  For those of you who don’t follow sports, the Rangers and Giants played in the World Series last season. 

Combine this annoyance with the fact that the four aforementioned teams have been poaching all of the top rate talent in the league for the past 20 years taking full advantage of the non-existent salary cap.  

We then came to find out that every baseball player who hit a home run between 1990 and 2007 was injecting every possible kind of steroid he could get his hands on in the dugout in between at bats.  Nobody seemed to notice that Barry Bonds basically transformed from a skinny kid into a horse who could swing a baseball bat in about 9 months time.  The man’s head grew 7 inches wider in one year.  His Head!!!!   It doesn’t take a neurosurgeon to know that people don’t hit a growth spurt in their late 20’s that causes their head to grow to nearly twice its original size. 

Nobody outside of the East Coast even watches baseball anymore.  Hence you have teams like the Indians who have the best record in baseball and about 11 fans coming to watch every game.  And then yeah, that’s pretty much Major League Baseball for you.  

Baseball would be well off to just follow the NBA’s lead and contract to a point where you are left with a handful of relevant franchises that people actually care about playing one another.  Do we really need the Pirates or the Royals or the Padres of the world anymore?  Would anyone even care if they went away? 

We would also benefit from a huge decline in having to listen to baseball sportscasters incessantly shoving their idea of how baseball is some sort of a sacred spectacle that we should all stop in our tracks and worship the nostalgia and history every time some guy runs 90 feet.   Not a lot makes me more sick then listening to Joe Buck precede an everyday baseball broadcast with some sort of  historical montage, ripe with images of the sport from the 40’s and 50’s as though anyone really still gives a shit. 

It’s not that these are bad sports at their fundamental level, but the money generating machines that they have been forced to turn themselves into has made them bad, period.  As soon as you take anything that is not about money and make it completely about money it will go to hell quickly.  This culture has made Disney and ESPN and ABC and players and owners and sponsors and merchandisers Trillions over the years but are the sports any better for it?   Are the cities that harbor these teams better for it?  Are the fans that pay for the stadiums and arenas and baseball parks and team merchandise getting any sort of a return on their investments?  Or are we all just getting screwed out of the sports that we once loved while a handful of people get ridiculously rich? 

Booze II

This is a follow up to the immensely popular blog posting “booze”.  Unfortunately for myself, I do not have a shortage of such stories.  Writing these down often makes me wonder how I am alive and have never been to jail.  This is not fun for me.

I’m just going to crash at Dan’s: 

Myself and several friends partied the night away at a popular spot in Cleveland’s West Bank of the Flats which, at that time, was just a massive river-walk of bars and debauchery.  This particular bar was an 80’s themed bar and offered a drink, mostly consisting of Bacardi 151, called the Top Gun.  I had five of these drinks, over the course of about three hours.  I remember doing the shoulder dance with some forty eight year old lady for at least two of those hours.

At the time I lived in Cleveland Heights which would have been a fairly hefty cab fare, clear across pretty much the entire city.  So I got the brilliant idea to just walk to Dan’s apartment (basically across the street) and crash there. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t call Dan until I had arrived at the entrance to his building.  After about 3 harassing, one after the other, 4 AM phone calls to Dan, he finally answered his phone.  I told him that I was at his apartment and to let me in.   He then told me that he was in Canada.  He had told me that he was going to Canada, which is why he wasn’t out with us in the first place.  I don’t know why I thought he was home or how I could have forgotten which country my best friend was in. 

So I call a taxi, after all it was my only recourse.  The taxi said he would be there in ten minutes.  So I grab a seat on the sidewalk, on top of a retaining wall with a bunch of plants behind me. It was one of those huge concrete, decorative planters with a bunch of Tulips and shit in it.  At some point, I laid back into the plants and must have gotten very comfortable because I didn’t wake up until 9 AM the next day.   Now, at the time, I was working weird shifts and had weekdays off.  So I remember this was a Monday morning at 9 AM in downtown Cleveland. 

More responsible people, who were likely on their way to work were bustling by me in the streets. People were offering me change.  They thought I was a vagrant instead of some kid that got so hammered at an 80’s bar that had missed his cab and passed out drunk in a flower bed for five hours.  I took their change.  How I did not get arrested or mugged is absolutely beyond me.  My cigarettes and lighter were stolen. 

How I got rabbit punched on St. Patrick’s Day:

I am not sure which St. Patrick’s Day this was but as usual I started drinking downtown at around 8 AM With my friend Steven and some other friends.  Steven is one of these people who can drink all day long.  I on the other hand am really not.  You can find my friend Steven on any St. Patrick’s Day, still going strong late into the night, generally with lipstick all over his face, his shirt missing, his pants filthy, but still ready to party. 

I cannot do this.  Generally by 2 or 3 PM on St. Patrick’s Day, I am so shitfaced, that all I can think about is getting home and passing out.  So after a day of bar hopping, who knows how many shots, green beers, cocktails and at one point being thrown out a bar because Steven knocked over a ladder which broke a window, and calling a newscaster a shithead while he was live on the air, it was time for me to get home. 

We had taken the early bus from Steven’s house in Old Brooklyn downtown in the morning so I assumed I could just take the bus back to his place now in the late afternoon.   He told me that his door was unlocked and I was welcome to go in and pass out. 

Unfortunately, I had no idea which bus to get onto to get back to his place.  I did not pay close enough attention that morning.  Adding to my confusion was the fact that I was absolutely hammered and could not properly communicate with anyone.  So I basically just got onto the first bus I saw.  I passed out on the bus and woke up with the driver yelling at me.  I had reached the end of the bus line and I had to get off.  I needed to be in Old Brooklyn, but this bus had taken me to a town called Parma Heights.  Luckily I was able to locate where I was on a map at the bus station and found that I was less than two miles from where I should have gotten off. 

So I began to walk, in the rain from Parma Heights to Old Brooklyn.  It is now about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, I am wearing a green lay that I came to realize had colored my shirt and neck green throughout the day, and I am completely shitfaced.  

I did not piss at the bus station like I should have.   Now I am stuck in a very thickly settled, residential area with nowhere to relieve myself.  It is the middle of the afternoon, so I couldn’t really just duck behind a couple of trees like you can do at night.  Finally, I reached a boiling point, I couldn’t hold out any longer.  I did the best I could to hide myself behind a tree, on some guy’s tree-lawn in order to urinate.  I began to relieve myself on his front lawn.  I thought I had gotten away with it and was sort of laughing to myself when out of nowhere, some guy, who I assume was the home owner, ran up behind me and rabbit punched me in the back.  I learned the hard way about how painful it is to be punched in the kidneys while urinating.  It felt like a bolt of lightning had struck me in the back and exited out of my junk.

The man yelled something about calling the cops but by then I had run a good block away from him with no intentions of slowing down.  I glanced behind me and noticed that he was quite a rotund individual with no chance of chasing me down, even as drunk as I was.

After much trial and error, and having walked through a Taco Bell Drive through, I made my way back to Steven’s house to find him already there and past out.  Had I waited another 30 minutes, I could have just taken the bus with him and avoided being rabbit punched by an obese man in his front yard. 

The North American Golf Tour:

 One summer when I was 23 or 24 me and a good friend were invited to play on a local golf “tour” called the North American Gold Tour.   We accomplished this marvel, by demonstrating, to the “commissioner” that we both carried a 5 or less handicap throughout an entire calendar year.  We were able to prove this to him, by scanning and emailing copies of our own scorecards to his yahoo email account.   These scorecards were not from any sort of commissioned, supervised events, they were just me and my friends golfing and drinking as usual, doing a half assed job of keeping score and then emailing the scorecards to this guy who allowed us to join his golf tour.   So I immediately found the entire thing ridiculous and refused to in any way take it seriously. 

For the sake of this story, you also have to keep in mind that this particular tour, went by what is known as the Callaway Handicapping System.  All that you need to know about this system is that it is incredibly complex and complete bullshit.

The story starts the night before my first tournament.  My friend had a party in his yard which I attended.  I had to be at this tournament at 7 AM the next day and it was only a few miles from where the party was.  So it made sense for me to crash there and then head to the tournament the next day. 

The party got a little out of control.  Myself and my friend Matt mixed up a batch of what we called Blue Goo.  This is a plastic milk bottle, that you wash out, then fill with nearly an entire bottle of Vodka.  You then add sugar and a packet of Blue Kool-Aid.  We were a classy bunch back then. We drank the entire thing and past out around 4 in the morning. 

We woke up to my alarm two hours later and had one hour to get to this golf course and play in the first ever golf tournament of our lives.  My friend Matt has always been able to mask a hangover a lot better than I can.  When I am hung over, everyone around me knows about it. 

I arrive at the golf course and am immediately paired up with two of the biggest, straight-edge, Kaki-short wearing yuppie douche bags I have ever seen.  These men were taking this very seriously.  Meanwhile I am in jeans and am wearing a collared shirt, but only because I have to in order for the golf course to allow me to be there. 

I realize after about two shots that attempting to play golf was a huge mistake.  My sluggish pace and general disdain towards my playing partners has already worn their patience with me thin.  On top of all this, it turned out to be one of the hottest days of that summer and I could not have possibly been more hung over.  After I tee-off on the fifth hole, I told my playing partners that I had to go piss in the woods.  But I could not make it to the trees before vomiting in front of them right there on the tee-box. 

My playing partners walked off sighting the tournament rule that if someone in your group is slowing you down, you do not have to wait for them. 

I lumbered on alone, after about 12 holes; I was so hot that I took my shirt off.   My shirt smelled like Vodka and my jeans were absolutely soaked with perspiration.  This was one of the longest days of my life.  After all of this, I was really not golfing all that badly.  I was basically playing scratch golf. 

Little did I know that I was in the third to last group.  And it was customary for all of the groups who finished before mine to wait around the 18^th green and watch all of the other groups finish.  I hit a terrible approach shot about 25 yards over the 18^th green into all of these spectators.  They then stood in amazement as I come into view as a person with no shirt on, visibly hung over, sun burnt, tired, and sweaty, and dirty man.  At this point I was just dragging my golf bag behind me, not even able to lift it off the ground. My lips were a bluish, whitish, dehydrated hue and I couldn’t breathe without wheezing.  Several people went as far as to ask me if I was okay and if I could continue.  I was forced to play my chip surrounded by this mass of men who are all wearing their top of the line golf polo shirts and khaki pants, looking at me like I am some sort of criminal.

I managed a great up and down and ended up paring the hole.  A member of my group begrudgingly signed my scorecard vouching for its accuracy.  After all, it was accurate.  I ended up 13 over par for the day, not exactly a great round. I quickly got myself into the club-house to find my friend Matt in similar shape, drinking about a gallon of Iced Tea.  Before I could sit down, the Tour “Commissioner” asked the two of us to follow him into a ball room that was part of the club house.  We handed him our scorecards, and he yelled at us, mostly me, for a good five minutes about how he expected better conduct out of us.  I didn’t understand this.  How can you expect anything out of someone you had just met, for a period of five minutes, 6 hours earlier? 

In a stunning turn of events, my 12 over par, combined with the complete horseshit of the Callaway Handicapping System won the tournament.  I had the eighth worst score of the day, but thanks to their ridiculous handicapping system I walked out of there a winner. 

The look on those yuppies faces as I walked out of that club house, with three hundred of their dollars, fighting a horrendous handover, smelling like a bottle of vodka, with no shirt on, is one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen.  I dry heaved in the parking lot a couple more times, tossed my clubs in the back of my truck and went home.  I never played on the North American Golf Tour again. 

Captain Matt:

At one point in High School, myself and my classmates were forced to take a comprehensive, 11 page exam designed to figure out what sort of career best suited our personalities.  Even at the time, I felt like I was taking a quiz that someone had clipped out of a Cosmo.  Nonetheless, I answered every question to the best of my abilities with one hundred percent truth behind each of my answers.  I waited a week to get my results back, which for some dumbass reason, were given back to us in yellow envelopes, like these results were of some kind of national security risk.  I opened my envelope and there is was, right in the top middle of the first page. 

“After review of Matt’s entries and answers we feel Matt’s ideal career choice should be…  Tugboat Captain” 

I immediately found this result curious as I had never been on any sort of a boat in my life.  I had never set foot in any ocean, I lived in Ohio and I had never even thought about perusing any sort of nautical career.  How could a kid, who had not spent 15 minutes of his life, in any sort of body of water, be told that he should become a Tugboat Captain?

Is it even possible to just BECOME a Tugboat Captain?  Wouldn’t I have to work my way up through some sort of tugboat ranking system?  Or could I just show up one day, show them this test and immediately be named the captain of a tugboat?  Wouldn’t some sort of pervious management experience be required?   After all, I would be in charge of tugging enormous boats around some kind of body of water.  I’m not sure you can obtain that sort of responsibility just because it perfectly suits your personality.  How large is the crew on a tugboat?  It can’t be more than a two or three person operation. So that must be the lowest form of “Captain” imaginable.  This test basically told me that I should go be the captain of a floating tow truck. 

This particular test really failed me.  I don’t even need to try it out, I know for a fact, that I would hate every minute of my professional life, had I become the captain of a tugboat. 

Even stranger, about 6 of my friends from this particular class were told, on the same test, that they should all become Park Rangers.   These were all kids who were in my English class when we got our results back.  There were only about 30 people in that class.  Therefore according to the state of Ohio, 1/5^th of the kids in my 11^th grade English class should have become park rangers.  Can you imagine how astronomical the odds are of that test even being remotely correct about this were?  Six out of 30 kids, from the middle of nowhere Ohio, all of whom were in Mrs. Roth’s 3^rd period English class, were all destined for a fulfilling life as Park Rangers.  My friend Bob, who nobody has ever considered outdoorsy, was told to become a park ranger.  The sheer thought of Bob, prancing around the woods in a park ranger uniform makes me laugh my ass off every time.   It would be like if Jack Black was a park ranger.

Another friend of mine who is now an architect was told to become a grocery store supervisor on this particular test.   I find this one pretty hilarious, because by the time he had graduated from High School, he was already a grocery store supervisor.  Granted, he didn’t stop there; he paid his own way through college and is now an architect.  What in the hell is the State of Ohio doing telling 16 year olds that they should strive to become the supervisor of a grocery store?   Is that really a career choice to them?  Talk about setting the bar low. What is this 1952?  No offence to all of the great grocery store supervisors out there, but I feel like you end up as a grocery store supervisor, not so much work towards becoming one. 

My main point being, America has the wrong people doing the wrong jobs.  I don’t know what kind of crack squad of savvy motivated personnel they had putting this test together but there is no way they had any idea what in the hell they were doing.  I feel horrible for what must have been thousands of kids who took these results seriously.  There is a pretty good chance that those Bozo’s ruined a lot of young people’s lives with their horrendous feedback.  I honestly look at the “Which 80’s Hair Band best suits your personality” test on Facebook as a much more reliable judge of my character, than this test was.

What if everyone were to have listened to the results of their test?   The world would be overrun by park rangers and low level management.  No boats would be able to get into port because none of the tugboat captains would have any idea what the hell they were doing.   Oil spills would be an everyday occurrence, you would never be able to find anything you needed at the grocery store, and you wouldn’t be able to go outside without being harassed by park rangers. 

Now, what these people should have done is take a step back and give the kids more of a broad approach?  Maybe not give them such specific vocations?  Maybe you tell me, that my personality is well suited for leadership in stressful situations, instead of “Hey, go become a tugboat captain”.  Maybe you tell Bob and my five other friends, that their personality is best suited for a job that rewards their physical fitness, offers flexibility and takes into account their authoritative assets not “Hey, how about you all become park rangers”.   How about you tell Raymond to become something other than a grocery store supervisor?

When you look at what we are expected to do in High School, this fiasco of a test was kind of just par for the course.  Why in god’s name, we have High School kids dissecting animals is still beyond me.  I have managed to make a fairly good living for myself without once having to identify a crawfishes urinary tract.  But who knows, that sort of information might have come in handy, had I become a tugboat captain.   

Bush Vs. Obama; A Timeline

Let us take a look at the past five years of our nation’s history in terms of foreign relations, terrorism and our economy.   Some factual information may have been slightly altered in order to add comedic pinash. 

The final two Bush Years:

2006:   The financial calamity had not yet shown its ugly face so Bush decided to spend a lot of time dealing with illegal immigration from Mexico.  A novel idea with the proper follow through but the resolutions got completely bushed when they began building a fence along the Mexico border.  A fence that would never be finished and a fence that accounts for less than 10% of the US/Mexican Border.  The Mexican’s promptly continued digging their tunnels, which they have always used to get into the United States only now; they were laughing their asses off at our president while doing so.   

2006:  Our two wars between Iraq and Afghanistan plugged on.  At this point, we were doing a lot of expensive walking around those two countries.  We were not accomplishing much with our reactive approach.  But we were accomplishing spending 110 Billion Dollars a year.  Bush launched a massive drone campaign designed to blow up every deserted mountain along the Afghan/Pakistan border.  He nearly succeeded.

 When asked how things are going in Iraq, Bush responded with…"It's bad in Iraq. Does that help?” -George W. Bush, after being asked by a reporter whether he's in denial about Iraq, Washington, D.C., Dec. 7, 2006

2006:  Vice President Dick Cheney shoots his friend in the face because he thought he was a quail. 

2006:  George Bush met with the Texas Longhorn Football Team. 

2007:  The nation finds out that Bush and Cheney have been water-boarding suspected terrorists in their basement with all the windows closed and the lights turned off.   Bush and Cheney call this “enhanced interrogation techniques” and then go back to playing war with each other in the woods behind the White House and shooting bottle rockets at each other. 

2007/2008:  The housing bubble began to burst.  Bush spent most of time trying to combat illegal immigration and steroid using baseball players.    

"First of all, I don't see America having problems." --interview with Bob Costas at the 2008 Olympics, Beijing, China, Aug. 10, 2008

2007/2008:  The housing bubble completely collapses and America finds itself on the verge of the worst financial disaster in the better part of a century.  After several panicked speeches to the nation as well as allowing his administration to be effectively strong armed by the Federal Reserve and Wall Street in order to hand nearly 800 Billion Dollars to banks and insurance companies Bush summed it up like this…

"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office." --Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008

2007/2008:  Bush basically spends the end of his term coloring and eating Hot Pockets in the Oval Office and the nation elects Barrack Obama to the presidency.    The Dow finishes Bush’s run in office hovering somewhere around 7900.  This was its lowest point since the cretaceous period.

2008:  Bush and his wife and kids are physically forced to sit in chairs directly behind Barack Obama as Obama makes his presidential Acceptance Speech.  Obama’s acceptance speech is basically Barack calling George a stupid asshole for 45 minutes.  The National Mall erupts with joy and civic pride.

2008/2009:  Barack Obama has taken over the presidency and within the first 15 minutes eradicates most of Bush’s laws, including his laws against stem cell research.  For the first time, in a long time, Michael J. Fox cracks a smile. 

2008/2009:  Obama begins to hold banks and large insurance firms accountable for the billions of dollars Bush gave them.  Magically, the banks begin to give the excess money back.  The Dow begins a steady climb upward.  George Bush moves back to Crawford Texas and immediately begins erecting a fence around his house to keep out Mexicans. 

2008/2009:  Obama drastically decreases the troop level in Iraq and rotates them into Afghanistan where they are needed effectively bringing both situations unto a level of control not yet seen in the nearly decade long conflicts.  Obama’s administration goes to Pakistan and calls them all liars to their faces and basically tells them that they can all go F themselves, we’ll do it all ourselves.  George Bush graduates from Crawford Community College after demonstrating that he actually can read three sentences without making something up in the middle.  In celebration he does cocaine, rips his shirt off and wrestles a Bull to the ground with his bare hands.  All the while, the Bush family shoots guns into the air. 

2008/2009:  Obama stops torturing people.  He also goes to actual Arab countries and makes speeches that speak to Arabs in an eloquent, respectful manner.  The impact of this watershed piece of foreign policy is still reaping benefits today.  This action, to me, is still the greatest piece of offense thus far in the war on terror. This action by our president was the equivalent of an Atom Bomb on top of the Al Qaeda Headquarters.   It demonstrated to a massive region of people that they no longer have to live in a world governed by fear mongers and oppressive dictators.  Somewhere in Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden began to cry and pissed in his pants. 

2010:  The Dow has continued its constant rise and is now somewhere between 9 and 10 thousand.  Banks begin to lend money again and turn in profitable quarterly figures for the first time in years.  For the first time in a long time, people begin to think, “Maybe I won’t need to move my mom into the cellar”.  “Maybe I will have a job next week”, “Maybe Paw will not have to defend my house with a gun like its little house on the prairie.” 

2010:  Obama accomplishes pushing Health Care Reform through, something that the previous four administrations have been unable to do.  The Republicans immediately call the move too expensive and begin to piss all over each other demanding a free version of Health Care Reform that only rich people who live near their fat white bodies can utilize. 

2011: The Dow is now just about back to where it was before the housing bubble collapsed.  Companies are returning to profitability and the idea of small business is no longer a laughing stock.  The republicans are so upset by this that they knock Cheney’s wheelchair over on top of Lincoln Monument and then leave him there crying.

2011:  Obama releases his long awaited Birth Certificate from Hawaii which amazingly looks like every other Birth Certificate in the world.  The Republicans immediately pop their collars, tie their sweaters around their necks and begin physically attacking union leaders in Wisconsin and Ohio.

2011:  Barack Obama comes onto television around midnight and announces that he authorized one of the most incredible, surgical military operations in the history of special warfare.  An announcement that culminated in him telling the world that we finally killed Osama Bin Laden.  It was an eloquent, nine minutes of serious, intimidating, confident, prideful dialogue the likes of which I have never seen.  I’ve never felt so much like I had a “leader” in my life as I did while listening to that speech.   It was absolutely gangster yet absolutely perfect and socially acceptable.   

I find myself envisioning how Bush would have approached the same scenario.   More than likely he would have come out wearing some sort of a cowboy hat and bullet vest, saying something along the lines of “Today, on May First Two-Hundred-Thousand and Ten err Eleven, I authorized the thermo nuclear destruction of a town in Pakistan where we think Bin Laden might have been held up.  Our boys in Hazmat suits are now combing through the destruction to verify if we got him.  But I think we did, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED BITCHES!!”  Then he would have shot a pistol into the air and accidently blew an awning off of the East Rooms ceiling. 

2011:  The country immediately erupts into celebration while the otherworldly details of the mission slowly come out.  Steven Spielberg would have been hard pressed to dream up such a scenario.  We all come to find out that the last thing our greatest enemy saw on Planet Earth was a covert Seal Team blowing through the door to his bedroom.  The man who brought the idea of “terror” to all of our front doors met his maker in the most terrifying, intimidating way imaginable. 

Somewhere in Crawford Texas, a slow clap could be heard coming out of the Bush Compound for even they were able to recognize the gravity of what had been accomplished. 

The republicans put down their magnifying glasses and stop scrutinizing Obama’s birth certificate and asked themselves, “What the fuck are we doing?  With these kinds of results in 3 years, does it really matter if this man was born in Hawaii or Honduras?  Obviously he has our best interest at heart. Has anything we have done over the past decade helped anyone in anyway?”