HOME
Message Board
CURRENT COLUMNS
- Editor's Corner
- Blogfest 2005
- Commentary
- Commentary Too
- Down The Middle
- Faulking Around
- Global Warning
- This guy walks into a bar...
- Investing 101
- Faulking Opinions
- Off The Rail
- Words
ARCHIVES
LINKS
CONTACT US
 | |||
Off The Rail - Oct 28, 2006 - Printable Version
- Brilliantly Dumb
by Mike Bohling
Here we are a week before the mid-term elections and it looks as though the Democrats have a good shot at retaking one, or possibly both, houses of congress. I can’t necessarily say that this would be a good thing for America, but what the hell, it couldn’t get any worse. Being as against the neo-con agenda as I am, I should be celebrating a possible shift in power by cracking open a bottle of champagne, but I can’t bring myself to do it because of my continued disappointment in today’s voter. Let me explain:
In watching the polls, I noticed that the Mark Foley sex scandal (if you can call a few e-mails a sex scandal), had a surprising effect on how many people in the country plan to vote in the upcoming election. Immediately after the scandal broke, the Democrats running for congressional seats received an up-tick in the polls, and the Republican numbers proportionally went down. It’s not that I wasn’t happy to see it happen, but if Foley is the reason why, it’s pretty damn disturbing. It’s as if you were to continue fishing after a shark just bit off your right leg. There you are, standing in the surf on your remaining left leg, hemorrhaging your life’s blood into the ocean, casting your line and trying not to stick the hook in your ear.
So, here we are, getting ready to cast our ballots in an election that could become a major turning point the direction that our country is headed, and basing our decisions a few perverted e-mails sent by a gay congressman. Nevermind the hemorrhaging of blood, money, lives, and prestige that our country once held in the world. Forget the alarming rise in the number of terrorists and countries aligning themselves against us. Don’t worry that Iraq is in civil war, has no functioning government, and has been a colossal failure from the word go. There’s a deviant congressman in our midst, and we must vote accordingly.
One congressman sending horny e-mails to teenage boys could sway the country’s vote in this election, but the giant shark swimming off with your right leg in Iraq leaving you standing in the surf bleeding to death couldn’t?
The mind boggles.
I’m witnessing the same thing happen in the Governors race here in Nevada. Our wannabe Republican candidate, (Congressman Jim Gibbons), poll numbers slipped after he allegedly got drunk and propositioned an off duty cocktail waitress in Las Vegas. It was also discovered that he hired an illegal immigrant as housekeeper back in the 1980’s.
This is a man who, in a plagiarized speech, said that all of the “liberal, tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, hippie, tie-dyed liberals to go make their movies and their music and whine somewhere else", and that if they wanted to go to Iraq to become human shields, he’d buy them a ticket.
If you look at his actual record as a three-term Nevada assemblyman, and five-term U.S. Congressman, it is clear that Mr. Gibbons has done nothing for the State of Nevada. He doesn’t have a single piece of major legislation to his credit. He supports higher prescription drug prices, opposes state programs to assist and shelter battery victims, and produced an article that cherry-picked and manipulated scientific data to downplay the dangers of toxic mercury at exactly the moment when the federal government was searching for a place to dump more than 4,000 tons of the stuff. Guess what state got saddled with the mercury dump?
On top of all this, Jim Gibbons has run what many have called the sleaziest Gubernatorial campaign in Nevada’s history. And people are changing their minds about him because he propositioned a waitress?
Do you remember the old bumper sticker that said “I used to be disgusted, now I’m just amused”?
It’s not even amusing anymore.
Voice your opinion on our message board (you don't have to sign up to post).