May 26, 2009

Let’s Throw a ‘No’ Party!

So the Democrats are putting down the GOP as the “Party of No.”

No problem.

Well, OK, it is a bit of an issue if President Obama can convince the public that the Republicans’ posture is simply an extended fit of pique about losing in 2008 – or an adult version of what we’ve all experienced from our two-year-olds (and I had six of them over the years).

“Do you want to put on your favorite pirate pajamas?”

“No!”

“Do you want a brand new Wii, a motorized car and the new Star Trek Duplo set?”

“No!”

“Do you want lots of sugar cereal, candy, cake and ice cream?”

“No!”

“Do you want billions of dollars in infrastructure, unemployment, education, housing, health and law enforcement spending for your state?”

“No!”

But as we all know, the truth – two-year-olds notwithstanding – is that sometimes “No!” is the right answer. To wit:

“Yo, I heard we all need more minerals, so I just ground up some rusty nails and mixed them with some arsenic in a barium shake. Want some?”

“Yeah, man, I know I just downed two pitchers of beer, five mojitos and who knows how many margaritas. But can I have my keys?”

“Hey, I have Chlamydia, HPV, active herpes, hepatitis and AIDS. Let’s have a wild night of unprotected sex!”

“C’mon, let’s pour $700 billion into propping up irresponsible bankers and badly run auto companies . . . drop another trillion or so on virtually untrackable pork barrel stimulus spending . . . add another $400 billion on an earmark-laden ‘omnibus’ package . . . try to push through cap-and-trade legislation that will cost every family in America more than $3,000 a year as far as the eye can see . . . and pay for it all by inflating our currency until we’re paying for groceries with wheelbarrows full of Ben Franklins!”

What? You thought that the reason gasoline prices have leaped some 40 cents a gallon in the three weeks had something to do with supply and demand for energy? Silly you. Energy demand is declining faster than Nancy Pelosi’s credibility index. Energy prices are rising again because the world is looking at our president’s fiscal policies – and the Fed’s efforts to accommodate them by making money looser than that girlfriend you couldn’t possibly have taken home to meet Mom and Dad – and running shrieking from the dollar as a store of value.

Could that be why all, most of the, say, 200 million sentient beings in the United States – whereby I’m eliminating everyone under 20 and everyone who voted for Kris Allen to win American Idol, and assuming a large degree of overlap – are beginning to realize that maybe a throwing a “No Party” wouldn’t be such a bad thing about now?

“Hey, we’re going to put a bunch of dangerous killers from Gitmo on welfare and let them go. Can we release them into your state/county/neighborhood? Or at least hold some of the ones we’re keeping in a high-security prison near you, where they might attract reprisals or escape attempts?”

“Say what?”

“How ‘bout we appoint a Supreme Court justice who will rule with ‘empathy’, basically meaning ‘anything goes’ when it comes to liberal spending, intrusive regulations and a near-certain discovery of a ‘right’ to same-sex marriage deep in the ‘penumbras’ of the Constitution?”

“Huh?”

“Let’s play footsie with Kim Jong II and the mullahs on nuclear weapons – and hope all those missile tests they are launching aren’t their idea of a ‘positive response.’”

“What’s in those cigarettes the president never gets photographed smoking, anyway?”

“Yo, how about we destroy the bond market by stiffing Chrysler’s creditors and handing the company over to the very workers whose exorbitant demands sank it in the first place, not to mention the government whose outrageous CAFE standards finished the job?”

“Help.”

“Am I getting the sense you’re all having second thoughts about the election last fall?”

“Ya think?”