Cranky Bear Holds Congress in Contempt

Note: My friend and associate Cranky Bear has been sending me plenty of missives by carrier pigeon over the last few months, but I have been trying to make this site less profane, and more professional.  However, in the aftermath of Congress' vote yesterday, his is the abrasive voice that needs to be heard.

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Cranky Bear here, sipping bourbon and about ready to blow my stack.  Good old Cranky has been pretty desensitized to the braying idiocy of humanity and its tendency to be its own worst enemy.  However, there are times when even I am surprised at the base stupidity of our elected dipshits.

In case you didn't know, ninety percent of Americans support universal background checks for the purchase of guns.  They find keeping deadly weapons out of the hands of psychopaths, domestic abusers, and convicted felons to be such a common sense proposition that most people think we already have such safeguards in place.  Only if that were so.

I honestly can't think of any issue where 90% of the country agrees.  Hell, there are probably 15% who are so irascible that they don't think baby kittens are cute, or hold that the Star Wars prequels were superior to the originals.  Normally when the public lines up so definitively behind an issue our Congresscritters get so overanxious to please their constituents that the queue to the grandstand goes around the block.  For instance, just witness how public hysteria in the aftermath of 9/11 led to the horrifyingly sweeping PATRIOT Act.

Congress hasn't been too slow to act when it wants to, despite our assumption that it's incapable of action.  For instance, Congress managed to pass a massive giveaway to the evil motherfuckers at the Monsanto corporation in the dead of night as if by magic.  Corporations are people, after all, and furthermore, to quote Orwell's Animal Farm, "some animals are more equal than others."

If Monsanto needs legal protection for its nefarious deeds, fine, but if twenty innocent first-graders are torn to shreds by bullets fired from a weapon meant for the battlefield by a psychopath so loopy that his actions came as little surprise to those who knew him, that's just their tough fucking luck.  Next time pack some heat, assholes.

Those who voted against background checks might object to that characterization of their stand, but as far as I can tell, they are motivated by one of three factors: 1. Licking the ass of the gun lobby in return for blood money 2. An insane interpretation of the second amendment that makes it easier to buy an assault weapon than to register to vote 3. Absolutely craven fucking cowardice when it comes to standing up to the rabid gun nuts.  Their votes are based on either corruption, stupidity, or fear, which are never good reasons to do anything.

I am not so naive to think that our country is really a democracy, but I think that yesterday's events ought to have finally torn the mask off for anyone who had any doubts.  The overwhelming will of the people for a common sense reform of a system that leaves tens of thousands a year dead from gun violence was no match for a powerful demagogic lobby representing a small faction of shit fer brains whack jobs that's got wads of dollars bills it can peel off.  At least we won'y have to argue anymore whether our system is a catastrophe or not, just on whether it is merely fucked up, or Lindsey Lohan fucked up.

Well Congress, I do have to give you some credit.  Your approval ratings are just south of those for root canals and urinary tract infections.  It seemed it would take a miracle to get them to go any lower, but you actually figured out a way to do it, namely to ignore the vast majority of the people you supposedly represent, so you could prevent any solution to the bloody violence that claims new lives everyday.  Congratulation-fucking-relations assholes, I thought it couldn't be done.