The March 2015 Douchey McDouche Bag Award

In March 2015 there were so  many people who deserved to be  called a douche bag that it  actually got a little crowded at  the top.

We had state leaders in Indiana  bolstering laws so service could  be refused to specific segments of  the population, the crashing of a  Lufthansa Airline plane into the French Alps by a depressed pilot and of course Canadian-born U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex) running for U.S. President and signing up for “Obamacare,” after opposing it vehemently for his entire two years in Congress.

Yeah, there was enough douchiness to fill an industrial sized bag in March.

But in the end, it was not Rafael Cruz alone who would be dubbed the douchiest. Nope, March 2015 was a time where Cruz’s brethren on the far right side of the aisle joined with him and swiped our top spot.

Only true douche bags would still be “on swole,” after losing an election 7 years ago.

But only the winners of Boom Bap Radio’s March 2015 Douchey McDouche Bag Award can take regular old douchiness and amplify it so much that it could create an entire alternate world, government and application of democracy.

Often thought to be solely in the mind of comedian Bill Maher, this magical land was created by Conservatives when that big, black, scary Barack Obama became U.S. President in 2008. You know it, and love it as: “The Bubble.”

It’s a beautiful land, where Fox provides all the news, Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh are bards of truth and President Obama is a Blackenstein monster, who worships Islam, hates America and is a Socialist, who is a secret citizen of Kenya.

That’s right in “The Bubble” Obama is hell bent on wrecking the U.S. economy and the Constitution; taking your guns and getting Iran “the bomb-ba-ba-bomb-ba-bomb dee-bomb-bomb!”

All of these paradigms were just punchlines on a Home Box Office talk show, until March 2015, when the people in “the Bubble” actually began mashing up fantasy with paranoia and reality.

Not to soon after, what was hidden was revealed and a place I thought was a theoretical concept tried to, unsuccessfully of course, push its way into everyone’s reality by appointing a new leader and usurping ongoing international negotiations.

The Bubble World showed itself to civilization after the White House began negotiating terms with Iran over its Uranium enrichment program. Next thing you know, history is being made and the U.S. Constitution is being shredded and this time for real and not by Obama.

If I Ruled The World…Imagine That

The plan appears to have been hatched back in January when Obama gave his annual State of the Union address and dared poo-poo a Republican plan to ramp up sanctions against Iran just as the President planned to negotiate terms with the Middle Eastern nation.

During the address, Obama vowed to veto the legislation and all of a sudden it got on and popping in Bubbleland.

In fact, the threat of negotiating with Iran pushed Speaker of the House “Cry Baby” John Boehner and the “Do Nothing Congress” to actually do something. Congress quickly flew into action against that Obama and the U.S. Constitution in one fell swoop.

 

In this edition of “If I ruled the world,” Boehner decided to go over the American President’s head and bring in another chief of state; one with which he actually agreed – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Who knows how much Scotch or other top shelf liquors went into Weepy eyed John’s decision, but for the first time since he was appointed leader of the GOP, he’d actually cracked it and done something exceptional. By inviting and ultimately bringing in, another world leader to address the United States Congress, he’d accomplished something no Congressman had accomplished in the 239-year history of the country – usurping the Executive branch of the government.

By inviting the leader of another country to address Congress without the blessing of the sitting Commander –in-Chief, evidently is not only historic, but appears to violate the Constitution.

According to a piece on the matter written by Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, Boehner’s invite violates power given the President under the three branches of government. Under the Constitution, the President is predisposed to meeting with foreign leaders and unilaterally pursuing peace for the nation.

The Constitution states: that the President, “shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers from foreign governments.”

So when Bibi made his historic address to Congress on March 3, 2015, he was entering unspecified douche-dom.

Netanyahu could have declined the out-of-line request and kept it moving, but where’s the fun in that?

Dubbed as a way to send a message to the world about America and its policy for the Middle East, the speech before Parliament in Bubbleland also seemed to serve as a final campaign whistle-stop for Netanyahu, who was running for re-election in the real world just two weeks later.

It’s unprecedented, but why not stop in fantasy world, give a speech to people who aren’t your constituents, use it as campaign fodder and swoop to re-election – which he handily did. It was “no harm, no foul.”

However, in Washington, D.C., the historic speech continued the ongoing disrespect the Legislative branch of our government has shown for the President, since Mitch McConnell vowed to focus soley on never allowing Obama to win a second term – a sort of Declaration of Independence for Bubblelandians.

As Bubbleland welcomed its leader of choice, and applauded his every word, Obama was not available. He was too busy chopping it up virtually with the European Union regarding issues in the real world – like the conflict in the Ukraine, ironically via video conference.

Netanyahu lapped up all of the attention and continued his attack on the Obama administration, which has been portrayed by Israeli hardliners as anti-Israel, pro-Iran and weak.

Highlighting the anti-Semitic vitriol of Iran and the country’s known opposition to the United States, Netanyahu pointed to the talks as “a very bad deal” even though no formal deal had been reached or rejected.

According to the Israeli Prime Minister international sanctions against Iran and negotiations to limit its achieving nuclear bomb were part of a bad strategy and deal that paved the way for an Iranian inter-continental cruise missile at some point in the future. Bibi held that the Administration’s negotiations hinged on the hope that Iran would somehow become a better international citizen while somehow being unaware of Iran’s threat to Israel, the region and the world.

Although he mentioned the increased use of international sanctions that is part of the U.S. deal, anything contrary to the destruction of the structure that could produce uranium enrichment is unacceptable to Bibi.

Without stating how Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would be destroyed without more war and bombs, Netanyahu urged Congress to stand up to Iran, got real comfy, cozy and went to the visual aid-mode, replete with graphs and charts to physically show what the Iranian threat meant to the world.

Never mentioned in the sometimes pointed address was the delicate political reality surrounding Iran and its battles against ISIS or ISIL in cooperation with the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East and Europe – oh that’s right this was in the bubble.

When all of the jack’s were back in their boxes, Bibi reminded Congress of what a good ally America has been since helping to create the nation from a part of Palestine, uttered a phrase in Hebrew and jumped back in his magical balloon and floated back to Oz.

A good thing he only serves as leader of the imaginary Bubbleland …hmmm.

I Wish I Lived In A Land Of Cotton

Tea Party pol and recently elected U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark) began to trip the light fantastic when he penned a letter to Iran’s leaders while the current Secretary of State John Kerry was actively engaging in negotiations with the Middle Eastern country in regards to its Uranium enrichment program.

The Freshman Senator sent the letter on official U.S. Senate letterhead and found 46 other GOP senators to sign onto the disapproval of any potential deal Kerry worked out with the “frienemy” nation that has both loved and hated America over the last 70-years.

As part of the March 9, 2015 correspondence, Cotton attempted to explain the United States Constitutional system to the Islamic Republican of Iran. http://www.cotton.senate.gov/content/cotton-and-46-fellow-senators-send-open-letter-leaders-islamic-republic-iran

What started out as a wrong-headed civics lesson to the leaders of a country that could really care less, took on a more threatening tone, when Cotton went on to explain to leaders of a foreign land that current negotiations with our government were irrelevant because not only would any agreement require ratification by Congress, but “the president may serve only two 4-year terms, whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms,” the correspondences stated. “As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then—perhaps decades.”

To that end, Cotton went on to explain that anything currently agreed upon with Secretary of State Kerry is temporary at best and in addition this long fought agreement could be revoked “with the swipe of a pen” from the next  President and/or altered by Congress in the future.

Umm, yeah – and the Earth could also get hit by a giant asteroid or a shark-nado for that matter, but who’s counting?

The thing that made the historic correspondence so douchey was its signing by Congress people who obviously should know better. The laughable document was signed by the likes of Sen. Orrin Hatch, Sen Mitch McConnell; Sen. John McCain; Sen. Lindsey Graham, Sen. Cruz; Sen. Rand Paul; Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Tim Scott as well as 37 other haters.

With “Mr. Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb – Iran,” leading the parade, the misguided legislators shot the correspondence to the startled leaders of the Axis of Evil nation, who were just sitting down with the Secretary of State John Kerry.

Kerry, a member of Congress for 29-years, was in utter disbelief when he was met with the news that the American legislative body was reaching out to and offering political advice to Iran before consulting its own sitting President.

Vice President Joe Biden, also a former member of the Senate for 36-years, said the move was beneath the dignity of the body.

But what turned the dispatch from douchey to downright embarrassing was the response from Iran itself, which thought the creation of such a letter was propaganda or at least a really bad joke.

It’s delivery to Iran was mocked and laughed at, but later critiqued.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said he was “astonished” that Congress sent leaders in his country such a letter despite currently being involved in active negotiations with the U.S.

“It seems that the authors not only do not understand International law, but are not fully cognizant of the nuances of their own Constitution when it comes to Presidential powers in the conduct of foreign policy,” Zarif said.

You know you’ve penned a douchey document when the folks you’re supposed to be punking, in fact turn around and son you.

To make matters worse, young-assed Senator Douchebag also seemed to miss the fact that the negotiations were not part of a private meeting between the U.S. and Iran, but instead an international conversation between a group of nations including China, Germany, Russia, Great Britain and France.

So as the world gave Sen. Cotton, the collective, “get outta here kid, you bother me,” treatment, in “the Bubble,” what was embarrassing became some kind of weird badge of courage.

Maher Alert!!!!!

Ironically, March’s dispatches from Bubbleland were prognosticated by HBO comedian and liberal stalwart Bill Maher many, many years ago.

Like 21^st Century Paul Revere, Maher began sounding the alarm on “the Bubble” and the danger its leaders and citizens posed to the rest of the civilized world back in 2011.

In those days, Maher aired a weekly segment which inspired the name of this very post: “Dispatches from the Bubble.”  During his bits Maher would usually quote something inane from GOP leaders, who often would say any and everything about President Obama, while holding to some of the hardline context that serve as the bedrock for the alternative reality he called “The Bubble.”

In those nescient months after Obama’s victory, the world witnessed the rise the Tea Party and the “Birthers” movement which categorically insisted that Obama was born in Kenya and that he was part of a secret Socialist movement to overthrow the U.S. government.

No, seriously, we know the news cycle is never ending, but you’ve got to remember people not only saying this stuff out loud, but also getting headlines with these fables in the actual media.

To make matters worse, the Tea Party grew into an arm of the Republican Party and Donald Trump continued to threaten to out the President as a non-American aided by the investigative data he’d paid for from an army of detectives.

All along, viewers of Fox News and large groups of uninformed Americans continued to live in an alternate universe all the way up to the 2012 election. So desperate where they that everyone hitched their collective wagons to a “Him-bot” named Mitt Romney and took a run at the White House.

The 2012 election marked the first time the campaigns of both candidates spent $ 1 Billion a piece in pursuit of a White House victory.

As thoughts of “the Bubble” appeared to fade away with a Romney loss, the desperate GOP focused on other items like undoing the Affordable Care Act and stopping immigration reform, until March.

It was then that some douche bags opened the portal again and out came all of the residents of the alternative universe we so thought had fittingly crawled back under their respective rocks.

Back in the real world, negotiations were still in full throttle, but month’s end. The world and Iran continued to work towards limiting the African nation’s enrichment of Uranium, while crippling them with sanctions and of course accepting its help to fight ISIL.

As for the dispatches, they will continue as long as residents of the alternate universe continue to construct a land that looks like America in their minds.While that happens, I’m sure they will again be relegated to the kiddie table and urged not to speak when adults are talking.

So here’s to the real GOP in this world and the citizens of that bubblicious land over the hills and far away, you are the March 2015 winners of the Boom Bap Radio Douchey McDouche Bag Award.  Enjoy your coveted prize – hey it almost looks like a bubble.

However, don’t fill it with too much hot air, you unrealistic, negotiation usurping, laughing stock to the world – douche bags!

And Bill Maher, by the way, I know you’re not wrong.