Laughing with the Moon

By Jonathan Bert

The Extreme Moderate

February 25, 2010

Moon, you can laugh, you're a quarter million miles away. I have to laugh to keep from crying.

Obama, what a disappointment. We needed someone with tremendous skill and intelligence to get us out of the mess the Bush bunch got us into, and we get this character that can screw up a wet dream. This dumb-ass was elected to reform the financial system, but instead of financial reform, he's spending all of his time on health care reform and pollution control while Wall Street is still getting seven figure bonuses and the middle class is broke. You stupid shit head, get the country running on all cylinders and back to prosperity, your popularity would be incredible, then nobody, from Maxine Watters to John Boner (did I spell that wrong?) would dare to step out of line when you push your pet programs. Obummer.

Now we have the "Tea Party." I guarantee you that these clowns are not drinking tea. Anybody that thinks dingbats like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann make sense must be smoking crack with their bourbon. And they believe the "Birthers." Hawaii might seem nice, but it is still part of the United States. Remember how pissed off the U.S. got when the Japs bombed it? Duh!

The Republican Party IS the party of "No!" No compassion, no integrity, no ideas.

The Democratic Party is the party of "Moe," as in Larry, Curly and Moe. And Moe government!

I am impressed with the dignity W is displaying in his time out of office. Dick Cheney, on the other hand, is still the bastard from hell. A leopard can't change his spots.

Car Insurance must be one hell of a racket. They're damn near the only businesses that can still afford to advertise!

The rest of the ads are from lawyers suing drug companies. That is why I only do drugs that are not FDA approved!

The cops in Murderapolis were braggin' that there were only 19 murders there last year. The thugs must have felt 'dissed, the murder rate is back to normal, with seven just in January.

Sarah Palin writes notes on her hand. Hey, ding-a-ling, you're not in junior high anymore.

Raul Emanuel shouldn't call people "Retards," Democrats are supposed to be politically correct. Rush Limbaugh shouldn't call people "Retards," without retards he wouldn't have an audience!

Bailout? Hell, the best thing to happen to General motors is Toyota. Honda is having trouble, too. I guess cheap Japanese crap is still cheap Japanese crap. Buy a Buick.

A killer whale killed one of it's trainers. Maybe now some of these morons will figure how these critters got their name.

Those boneheads from Idaho, (where else?), were supposed to save orphans in Haiti, but none of the 33 kids they grabbed were actually orphans! These people were up to something shady. I don't know what they had planned for the girls, but I think they were going to sell the little boys to priests.

Moon, I can't laugh anymore, I'm going to start crying. Your laughter just makes it hurt more. I'm going to send my pennies, (all three of them!), to NASA to help buy another rocket to shove up your dark side.

Hiding from the Moon

By Jonathan Bert
The Extreme Moderate

December 2, 2009

Hello, Moon, I haven’t barked at you for a while, sorry. I know I promised to keep in touch; I’m not always the best at keeping promises. Just ask my ex-wife. It’s hard to get in the mood for typing during the brief Wisconsin summer.

Wisconsin has two seasons: Summer and Bummer.

I’m pretty disappointed with President Obama’s performance. I was so hoping he’d be great, the way Lincoln followed Buchanan. It’s more like Curly following Moe.

He needs to focus! Focus on what is needed now! He pulled our economy out of a freefall, (Thank You, Mr. President!), but great attention must be paid to getting the recovery moving. A jobless recovery isn’t a recovery: jobs have to be priority number one. W and his crew got this country sliding into third world status, the only thing that can stop it is getting this great country back to work! Either that or we’ll be digging for grub worms for lunch.

And then he’s got two wars to worry about. One is a true quagmire, and it seems like it is cooling for him. It was a war that shouldn’t have been started. Getting out of there will be much appreciated.

Afghanistan is a big problem. There isn’t any way out of there without us getting screwed. We have no way of winning this war without forming alliances with filthy warlords, which will, of course, turn around and bite us, or, let these warlords form alliances with the Taliban, which will, of course, lead to the end of life on Earth as we know it. Afghanistan is ruled by warlords, always has been, and will be for the foreseeable future.

We’ve got to quit worrying about what is happening in other countries so much. They will evolve! Remember, it was less than 200 years ago this country had slavery, was in the process of exterminating natives, and women here weren’t treated any better than they are in Saudi Arabia. Lead by example; don’t shove rockets down their throat. Our perfect union needs to be made more perfect, take the moral high ground here at home! Other countries will follow suit. It will be hard to promote human rights around the World when there are plenty of human wrongs still occurring here.

For one thing, let gays get married. I still don’t understand why they should be spared the misery.

In a case of outright genocide, such as in Darfur, maybe we should’ve gotten involved, but we didn’t. I guess Haliburton didn’t see any profit there.

Obama has to hang up his hopes of bipartisanship. The Republicans are doing nothing but obstruction, and what makes him think the same people that spent the previous eight years running the country into the ground have any good ideas? Hey Moe, what do you think I should do about Iraq?

A woman wants to skip out of the military to take care of her baby. Hey ladies, you wanted to have equal rights to kill strange people, now you’ve got it! And you know the military doesn’t like babies, they blow them up by the thousands!

Health care needs reform, has for decades, but Obama is wasting too much time, and too much of Congress’s time, trying to push it through in big hurry. You know damn well that if Congress is given a lot of time, they will screw things up. If they are rushed, they will screw it up worse!

I’m a big believer in letting states be the incubator of ideas. Let the states come up with solutions to health care, then adapt what works on a national level. You know damn well the 2,000 pages of garbage the U.S. Congress is pulling out of thin air is just going to give it to us in the wrong end.

The environment is an urgent problem, but there will be no solution if we’re burning the stubs from our unemployment checks for heat. Give it a rest, concentrate on getting the country back on it’s feet. I know the goobers that listen to Glenn Beck think the atmosphere reaches to the stars, when, relatively speaking, it’s as thin as an apple peel, but now, especially with allegations of “trick” data surfacing, it is not the time to push it.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned! Just asked Tiger Woods. He lost his reputation and a couple of teeth.

Forget about Huckabee in 2012. He’s got a Willie Horton on steroids. I’m not a big fan of cops, but I don’t like to see them die. Just maim their arms so they can’t club you so hard.

Sarah Palin wrote a book. At least she dictated a book to someone that knows how to write. She’s sold more books than there are Republicans that can read.

Moon, I will write you another time, I’m sure. No promises this time. No promises made, no promises broken. And thank you for not throwing anything at me, those meteorites can leave a mark.

Obama’s Worst Report Card

By Jonathan Bert
The Extreme Moderate

March 20, 2009

Every idiot blogger and turdball pundit has been grading our new President’s performance way before enough time has passed to make a truly fair assessment. Being an idiot blogger, and turdball pundit, myself, here is my unfair assessment:

The economy is job number one. Obama somehow drove our economy on a downhill slide years before he took office. Nothing the Bush administration did could slow Obama’s encouragement of the massive collection of “Toxic Assets” that our major financial institutions managed to own, and insure. Now, in the guise of a stimulus, he is giving these institutions more money, taxpayer dollars in fact, to mismanage. He must be given credit for saving the bonuses for the people running these firms. There are those that feel that the executives of the corporations that are being bailed out should be denied their millions of dollars in bonus cash just because they made a couple of little mistakes. Someone in Congress even tried to put a provision in the “bailout” bill to cancel these bonuses! But we can thank the Obama Administration, with the help of their friend, Senator Christopher Dodd, for eliminating this amendment, guaranteeing that these poor fellows will get their hard-earned wages. Obama also deserves an A+ for not giggling when talking about how “outraged” he is about these bonuses. On the down side, Obama is giving the unemployed more money, and extending the time they can collect Unemployment Insurance benefits. Any sensible person knows the best way to deal with unemployment is to let the unemployed starve to death, at which time they will no longer be unemployed. Overall, in dealing with the economy, Obama deserves a D-.

Foreign affairs are a big part of a President’s job. Of course, Obama is screwing this up. Instead of continuing a war against an enemy that posed little threat, he wants to wind that war down. And we haven’t finished the job there! Intelligence gathered during the Bush administration clearly showed that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, but Obama is going to take our troops out of there before said weapons are found! Instead, he’s going to expand the war in Afghanistan, where our actual enemies are found, where 9/11 terrorists trained and had safe harbor! Any idea what a can of worms that would be? Fighting actual enemies? Bush had way more sense than that. He went after an easy target, which was pretty much contained by international forces, and was toppled quite easily. The fact that he stirred up some actual enemies is neither here nor there; his intentions were good. As far as terrorism goes, Obama is looking at the vulnerability of our infrastructure. Bush put all of his energy into protecting airports from further hijackings. Obama seems to think that his Muslim brethren might think of a new way to attack us, and that we might be open to assaults not involving airports! How ridiculous! On top of that, he wants to “talk” to Iran! Have meetings and discussions with the leaders of the pivot point of the “Axis of Evil.” It’s almost like he wants to “Dine with his enemies.” This sounds like something Jesus Christ would say! And, as is obvious to anybody familiar with modern American Christianity, you don’t pay any attention to what Christ said! This is why the biggest objection to this move comes from the heavily Christian extreme Right. On foreign affairs, Obama gets a D-.

When it comes to Cabinet appointments, Obama screwed up again! For Secretary of State, the person responsible for dealing with foreign leaders, he chose someone intelligent, knowledgeable, charming, and experienced in dealing with foreign leaders! He should have found someone incapable of independent thought, someone that does what she is told to do, and says what she is told to say, in a voice with the same pleasant sound as a dental drill. Like Condoleeza Rice! Other Cabinet positions he tried filling with people that got caught scamming on their taxes! He has got to fill these posts with people that are smart enough to scam their taxes with out getting caught! On his Cabinet, Obama gets a D-.

On domestic issues, Obama is screwing up again! One of his first acts as President, he signed a bill continuing the misguided effort to make women equal to men! Nature didn’t even make women equal, who does he think he is to argue with Nature? And then he makes an “Executive Order” to fund stem cell research. Instead of using the hundreds of thousands of unused embryos in an attempt to find cures for horrible diseases, we should stuff those unused embryos into welfare mothers eight or nine at a time! Obama deserves some credit, though, for proposing that injured veterans should let their private insurance pay to treat their injuries. These deadbeat vets think they can travel to a foreign country, get their legs blown off by an IED, then expect the Army to pay for it? How ridiculous! All the same, on the subject of domestic issues, Obama gets a D-.

I could go on and on, then go on and on some more, about how badly Obama has performed these first two months on the job, but I can’t, and I’m sure you can’t, stomach any more. So far, Obama has gotten five or six grades of D-, which averages a big, fat F.

So I conclude this most premature and unfair of all premature and unfair assessments of President Obama’s job performance. I expect a job offer from Fox News any minute.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Bert

I Feel So Stimulated!

By Jonathan Bert
The Extreme Moderate

February 17, 2009

Today we get our new economic stimulus plan. Oh Boy! This is going to be good!

This bipartisan plan (it did get three Republican votes) is designed to give our economy a good kick-start toward prosperity. This stroke of genius will devalue our dollar, sell our banks to foreign interests, and drive our debt so high that our great-grandchildren won’t even get it paid off! Ain’t that swell? Excuse me, I have to look up “prosperity” in my dictionary, it seems I’ve had it wrong all these years.

Obama wanted support from Republicans, he wined them and dined them but then he let the Democratic leadership in the House write the damn thing. After years of getting pushed around by Bush and his extreme right cronies, the Democrats in the House are not in the mood for anything resembling bipartisanship. The Republicans are intransigent, being really sore losers, and after three decades they all of the sudden rediscovered fiscal responsibility! The parties are making this a showdown, gambling big. If the economy shows measurable improvement in two years, it’s a win for Democrats, and Republicans will be driven even closer to extinction. If the economy is still faltering two years from now, Obama might be dealing with a Republican Congress.

Our hope is that history repeats itself. It seems like Republicans get us into big economic messes, like the Depression (Hoover), the 1975 Recession (Nixon, Ford), the malaise of 1991-92 (Bush the Elder) and then get bailed out by Democrats. Another point is Buchanan, considered the worst President, was followed by the best, Lincoln. Bush the Junior is to be ranked right down there with Buchanan, Fillmore, et al, so maybe, if history is nice, Obama will turn out to be up there in skill with Lincoln, Roosevelt, and other leaders that got the country out of big messes. What is very scary about this particular disaster is that many Democrats in Congress, many still in Congress, were of great assistance to the GOP in creating the mortgage crisis, which has been the grease in this downhill slide.

So even if Obama is great, he still has to deal with a Congress full of idiots. Nancy Pelosi doesn’t even belong there, much less be there in a leadership position. On the other side of the aisle, we have John Boner (did I spell that wrong?), who is pretty much the same story. The Senate is in a very sad situation. There actually are some moderates in the Senate, but they tend to get kicked into the corner and forced to wear dunce hats.

The big problem is that American politics has been taken over by the stupid. The GOP has had big wins appealing to the backward and ignorant of the Deep South, rural areas, and places like Alaska. The Dems have their base among the undereducated of the inner cities. Anyone with an I.Q. North of the Mason-Dixon Line is left scratching his or her head trying to figure out who is the lesser of two evils. The problem is that there isn’t a lesser evil.

It has been demonstrated that the country runs best when power is divided. When Congress and the Presidency are in gridlock, they tend to do the least damage. Look at the last six years of Slick Willie’s terms. America ran like a well-oiled watch, at least until the GOP tormented Bill for liking women. How dare he! He should like men and little boys, like they do! Then you look at W’s first six, you get the definition of disaster. Not only did Republicans have control of the House, Senate and the White House, the Democrats showed their intestinal fortitude by caving at every reasonable opportunity. The past two years weren’t long enough to show much progress, mainly because the Republicans, being losers, did the best possible job of being pains in the ass.

Hopefully, very hopefully, this plan might work. The tax breaks will have a modest, but immediate effect. People building roads and bridges will not only be employed, but will eat at the local lunch counters. And the ripple effect will continue. The Art Community will employ artists, who will no longer have to work at the lunch counters, creating openings for unemployed youths. Other facets of the program also might create jobs. Ignore the whinings of the sore losers, there actually isn’t a whole lot of “Pork” in this bill. And the most attractive facet of this plan is that it is based on a “Trickle Up” theory, which is much more realistic than “Trickle Down.” Republicans seem to think that the money mongers are the power behind an economy, that thy will somehow direct the money in ways beneficial to the economy. Sorry Bozos, you really overrate your importance. The working class is the engine that drives our country. Republicans are short sighted; they like handing the money directly to the rich, which shows the general stupidity of the GOP. Get the money to middle class, and the money will get to the rich, even more money than if it’s handed directly to them, it just requires a little patience. That is because the middle class is equally stupid, because they will spend their money at Wal Mart, Best Buy and other “Big Box” stores rather than the local markets, destroying any hope of anybody of their class achieving the American Dream.

If it seems like foreign economies are being treated as if they don’t matter, well they don’t, at least not much. They need us more than we need them, for the time being.

So hang on. We are in a tailspin. Will we pull out of it? Will we make a graceful splash in the Hudson? Or will we land flat? Pray for the best. There are no atheists in foxholes.

Put America Back to Work!

By Jonathan Bert
The Extreme Moderate

December 15, 2008

I am sick of bailouts and loans for big businesses. This is still following the “Trickle Down” ideas from the Reagan years, and the middle class has suffered for decades because of this backward economic principle. We have got to reverse gears, get the money to flow up!

America needs jobs! While the little guys would love have money handed to them, like it is being handed to big financial firms, and soon to big car companies, most are very willing to work for it. Give Americans a regular paycheck and they will pay their bills, and buy new stuff. In a consumer driven economy, keep the consumer behind the wheel. Giving big business free money will just give them a license to keep their foot on the middle class’ throat.

Not that a lot of the middle class didn’t bring this treatment upon themselves. Reagan was the guy that figured out that if you get the ignorant among us frothing at the mouth over issues like gay marriage and abortion you could shove the screws up our butts and still get praised as great leaders.

Hey, the Democrats can fix this, they’ve always fought for the little guy! Say what? They want to shove billions to the big screw-ups instead of using the money for job creation? Do we have any friends? Don’t answer, I don’t want to hear it. We might also remember how much responsibility Democrats have for some of the trade agreements that shipped millions of jobs out of the country, with the crazy idea that we could compete with countries that don’t have OSHA and where trade unionists are shot. What would these guys do with a brain if they had one?

Franklin Roosevelt pulled us out of the Great Depression by putting America to work. Now, with all of our money going to bail out the big screws, can a job program be funded? Can we create a job program without big corporate interests demanding their cut?

Our new President will have to be strong, real strong, to do what’s needed to put America back to work, while making the bigwigs realize it will be good for them, too. Otherwise, we will witness the fall of the Great American Empire.

Barking at the Moon

By Jonathan Bert

The Extreme Moderate

December 12, 2008

The Moon is getting full again and I’m in the mood to bark.

I just moved, only seven miles, but it was still a pain in the ass. After living in the same place for 10 years, I’ve moved 3 times in the past year and a half. The way the job market is going my next move might be to a cardboard box.

America needs jobs. The Democrats are thinking like Republicans, bailing out the bigwigs instead of helping the little guys find jobs. People with jobs will pay their mortgages, pay their credit card bills, and buy new cars. These multi-billion dollar bailouts won’t do a damn thing. They want to give the car companies big loans, but they will still lay off thousands! That’s going backwards! Now the Republicans are looking good because they know a bad idea when they see one.

The Dems have a majority in the Senate, but it’s not filibuster proof. Hopefully everyone realizes what a blessing that is.

Illinois’ Governor just got busted for trying to auction off a Senate appointment! And there are other high power Democrats getting indicted. I might have to change my motto to Democrats are Crooks and Republicans are Clowns, or, let’s face it, they are all crooked clowns!

I’m trying to meet women that don’t drink, in Wisconsin. Do you know what that’s called? Lonely.

People in Wisconsin drink a lot so they can put up with the Packers.

NBC is going to move Jay Leno to 9 PM (Central Time). I need to be humored after the evening news.

Remember when people used to like Ladybugs?

A military jet crashed into a house killing two women and two children. F-18’s are fine machines, but they have no business flying over residential neighborhoods. Not in this country, anyway.

Gas prices are going down so now the SUV’s and overpowered pick-up trucks are coming out of the woodwork. I’m getting the impression Americans are slooow learners.

Winter is here in Wisconsin. Hell must be a cold place, nothing makes me feel more God-forsaken than a forty below wind chill.

New Mexico is losing a great Governor. Obama better put him to good use and not do what Bush did, ripping off Tommy Thompson then telling him to keep quiet.

I’m tired of barking. I’m gonna go out and bite somebody. Don’t worry, I’ve had my shots.