You know, ... I've been fighting this fight too long and I'm tired. I'm thinking the crazies just ought to go ahead and take over.

Seriously, move ol' Sarah Palin into the White House. Put Obama in shackles and display him on the front lawn for some crime. Hell I don't know what crime, just make something up. Bring Glenn Beck in as the White House spokesperson and let him decide how we should think about world affairs. I never liked facts or thinking anyway. Have the rest of the country follow Arizona's lead and require that all citizens carry proof that they are legal citizens. Make Christianity the state religion and force everyone to live by the rules of the Bible, literally, every single word.

Build huge walls around all of our borders with barbed wire on top. Allow homeland security more freedom to listen in on all of our phone calls and read all of our e-mails and correspondence. You just never know who is a terrorist these days. Instead of outsourcing just make sure all US employees work at world wide competitive rates, you know, about $5 to $10 per day, and that's 12 to 18 hours of work per day with no weekends. Imprison all the gays, censor all the porn, ban all the books and movies that Sarah Palin wouldn't read or doesn't watch herself, or at least what ever she and her like minded all agree is appropriate for us to read and watch.

Teach religion instead of science. Ignore the energy crisis and just keep drilling for oil. That will work for about 10 more years or so. Don't bother with things like stem cell research or NASA, that's just kooky science stuff. Who needs it anyway? Carry guns any damned place we want. That's fine because the government will have bigger and more powerful guns to make sure we don't get out of control, or they'll just microwave our insides from a mile away when we get all uppity, but we'll have our guns so we feel real tough carrying them around. And who doesn't like solving a dispute by shooting someone in the face? Let corporations do what ever they like, removing any and all restrictions.

Let capitalism in its purest form rule the land. When our cars go up in flames or our computers randomly electrocute us we'll just stop buying from that company and the market place will solve the problem for us. Get rid of all the socialist programs like unemployment benefits, health care, etc. The wealthy are altruistic and they'll help us out with charities and the such. They'll make sure some wealth trickles down to the rest of us unwashed masses.

Let's stop talking to world leaders or negotiating complex foreign affair agreements and just go with our gut instincts. When someone attacks us, or looks like they want to attack us, or we even think they may attack us in the future, we'll just bomb 'em back to the stone age. Nuke 'em and turn their deserts into glass parking lots. Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out. Who needs diplomacy when you've got bombs and tanks and jets. Besides, most of 'em speak some damn gibberish anyway and we can't understand 'em. What's the use of talk'n if you can't understand a damned word they say?

This is America damn it! God's country! A Christian nation! We speak American. If you don't like it get the hell out. Yeah, I'd like the crazies to take over just so that in 10 or 20 years from now I could look back and see how they turned the country into a third world, fascist, oligarchy. I doubt I'd survive the process though. I'd most likely be killed, imprisoned, or caught trying to escape. I image a lot of other people would as well. They'd solve that immigration problem though, because no one would be trying to get into the country and those walls would work just as well to keep people in as they would to keep people out.

So Jo, our friend Debbie and I hiked the Pleasanton Ridge today. Here are some photos from the hike.

Nothing special for this post. We had a late spring rain last week and I caught a few pictures.

Glenn Beck's and Sarah Palin's Real Motivations (It's not politics)

I take back everything I've said about Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. They are not idiots. They are however, making a boat load of money off the idiots that buy into their BS though.

Glenn Beck is Serious about making money

With a deadpan, Beck insists that he is not political: I could give a flying crap about the political process. Making money, on the other hand, is to be taken very seriously, and controversy is its own coinage. "We're an entertainment company," Beck says.

Sarah Palin pulls in $12 million in less than a year/

Pundits can debate the political costs and benefits of Sarah Palin’s decision to step down as Alaska governor, but the monetary advantages of leaving her $125,000-a-year public service post are beyond dispute.

I just felt a complete sense of relief after reading this. I listened to both of them and nothing about what they say makes sense to me. Political leanings aside, the things they say just really don't make sense. It's just rabble rousing kind of speech. There is nothing of substance that can be acted on from a political or policy stand point if they were actually serious politicians. They never expressed anything substantial that entailed a plan of some sort to improve the problems in this country.

So, yeah, reading this makes sense to me. I can understand it. Not like when someone asks Palin about the country's future energy needs and what her plans would be, then she starts to chant "drill baby drill". That's not a plan, that's nonsensical. It doesn't mean anything, but it does get people fired up. What does make sense is that it's a show, and that they don't need to make sense to their audience. All they need to do is get them fired up and buy all the crap their selling, like the books written by their publicists, or donations because people think they will make a difference. They are a lot like televangelists. People "believe" in them no matter what they say.

What's sad is that people like Ross Perot could actually do some good and did have plans to cut government waste but everyone just laughed at him because he sounded funny and had big ears. No one actually listened to what he had to say. Remember his comment about NAFTA and that "giant whooshing sound we'd hear would be the jobs leaving the US and going to Mexico"? Well, he was mostly right, what he didn't see was that it wouldn't just be Mexico but India, China, etc. He'd probably have been a horrible president but some presidential candidate should recognize what he could do for our country and just set him lose to fix a lot of problems we do have.

Here is another person that makes sense to me now as well, George W. Bush. Since he left the white house no one has heard him speak publicly, or at least widely in the media yet. Well, he did speak briefly about giving funds for Haiti's relief. He used to be fairly well spoken when he was Governor of Texas. Just Google for the video. Someone did a great job of comparing his speeches. The point is his whole persona while in the white house was a show. The way he spoke, with a thick Texas accent, using simple words, and he was presented as being an average man's man, someone you could have a beer with. He was even presented as a rancher, even though he bought the ranch in 1999 just before running for president and sold it immediately after leaving the white house. Other than that he's never owned a ranch nor has his family ever been ranchers. He was also presented as good Christian who had given up drinking and found Jesus. Well, those pictures of him completely sauced and stumbling around drunk at the Olympics in China show other wise, about the drinking anyway.

Anyway, I'm sure there are people polishing Obama's image as well. I know he's a polished politician but he doesn't present himself as being otherwise. This makes sense to me. I know he needs to be watched and held to his word but he's not lying about who he is. People like Beck, Palin, and Bush who are falsely portrayed as someone they are not, that bothers me. It's all image and no substance.

While commenting on Facebook about Bill Mahre, someone replied saying that they thought Bill Maher was pure evil. Now, I do watch Bill Mahre but I wasn't personally offended by someone else's opinion of him. In fact, I have heard similar statements about Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh. This demonetization of others who hold a difference in political opinion is something that I do find alarming though.

Think about it, calling someone pure evil. That's pretty bold. Personally I tend to reserve evil for those who've actually committed evil acts, but that's just me. While I disagree with Maher, Moore, O'Reilly, Beck, and Limbaugh on many topics, none of them reflect my own opinion or political ideas, I do find Maher more entertaining, but that is purely my opinion.

However, I think that that whole group, as well as others, are part of a problem in our country today. I wouldn't call any of them evil but they do promote divisiveness in this country and they are turning politics into a side show of spectacle and sensationalism.

These are TV "personalities" or political commentators expressing opinions. The more inflammatory or shocking they can be, they receive more press and notoriety. More people will begin to listen to them to either be a sounding board for their already firmly held beliefs, (that is beliefs, not facts, or fact based positions) or people listen to them to become enraged and disgusted by the latest idiotic statement.

We now have a political divide in this country where the discourse is pretty much nonexistent and we find it all too easy to demonize the other side rather than to listen to one another and find common ground for compromise, which a two party democracy is greatly dependent upon.

None of these "personalities" are even educated in political science or much less journalism. A few of them don't even have college degrees at all. So when we get right down to it, these are the people who are setting the tone for our nation's political discourse. We might as well be listening to our very funny, but non the less, absolutely batshit crazy neighbor lady rant about politics if that's type of political discourse we want.

The sad part about this is the supposed news networks and cable news channels have supported this type of discourse purely for the ratings. And even more alarming is when political figures themselves begin to endorse this type of rhetoric. The ignorant would rather scream at the top of their lungs blathering their opinions rather than engage in civil political discourse because it would quickly become all too obvious, that beyond a few talking points and firmly held beliefs, there is little to no substantial thought behind the facade.