Decide Dammit!

OK quick!  What's the most frustrating thing in the world?  Now for those fence-sitters out there running through the extensive list in your tiny little minds, let me help you out just a bit.  It's You!  And don't try and kid yourself that we haven't noticed who you are while we're standing behind you in the line at McDonalds (not that you'll find me hanging out at 'The Golden Arches' these days), waiting for you to decipher the intricacies of a menu that hasn't seen significant alteration in this millennium.

Don't get me wrong here, I know that there are sometimes tough choices that need to be made out there.  Yoga pants or pajama jeans, the shortest route or the quickest one on your GPS system, and chunky or smooth peanut butter are but a few of the earth shattering determinations that apparently can only be made after lengthy deliberation by someone with your Solomon-like judgment skills.  Of course there are those looking on from the sidelines who would like to see such resolution proceed at a less glacial pace, but certainly we can wait until you've completed proper contemplation on how much foam they should put on your latte (though the restraint required to keep our hands from your throat is almost crippling).

The problem now however, is that 2012 is a presidential election year; and that brings up even more indecision.  The mainstream media cannot decide how far in the tank it's willing to go for Democrats.  Fox News hasn't decided how far it's willing to go to counter the impact of its competitors on Republicans.  Largely irrelevant daily newspapers can't decide, based on their own past bias and increasing loss of credibility, if endorsing a particular candidate will do them more harm than good. 

Around the world, our traditional allies can't decide if more of what they've gotten for the last 3-1/2 years would be worse than what they might get from four years of the new guy.  Inimical governments and terrorist organizations can't decide if taking advantage of the apparent foreign policy weaknesses of the current White House occupant (especially this close to an election) can be used to their own political advantage, or will simply facilitate the election of someone who might be another game-changer for them, like Reagan was after Carter.

Of course all of this indecision inside the media and outside the nation, is because we are once more being told that this year's electoral process will be decided by ... you guessed it .... 'the Undecideds'.  This apparent group of vacuous voters will, according to pundits and other so-called experts, be swayed in the coming weeks by any public (or private) misstep of the candidates, by who makes a better showing in the three presidential debates (or how badly 'Jokin' Joe Biden performs in his one), and by who can raise the most money and run the most TV ads running up to the election.  (And people complained about how the BCS Championship decided the winner of College Football.)

Ostensibly the fate of the electoral process weighs on a group of people who, after over two years of campaigning, cannot now decide on their national leader.  After a campaign whose length seemingly rivaled that of the 100 Years War, they are still unable to commit to a candidate.  Apparently the fate of the nation will ultimately be decided by those who stand in the check out line at the grocery store, incapable of producing a decisive answer to,  "Paper or plastic?"  

Which of course leads me to my own 2012 dilemmas.  I can't decide if I simply pity those who, with all the information out there cannot apparently complete the deliberative process; or if I just hate their guts.  I'm undecided over whether perhaps if a few more people took more interest in learning about the people they vote for than about the lives and back stories of performers on 'American Idol' or on 'Dancing With The Stars', we wouldn't have Congressional gridlock (another form of indecision) and a $16 trillion national deficit.  I am unable to reach a conclusion over whether perhaps there wasn't a two-party stranglehold on the national election process, there wouldn't be so much indecision in the first place.  I am completely flummoxed over whether, if the education process in this nation spent a little more time teaching critical thinking and little less on fostering self-esteem, we'd have less people incapable of decisions on anything more important than whether they'll super-size their fries.

What I do know however is that there is a real pandemic of 'cranial / rectal inversion' occurring in this country; and it's far past time that people started pulling their aggregated heads out of their collective asses and Decide Dammit!

Health Alert

The Just Blowing Smoke Health & Human Services Division has just informed me of an epidemic that has been sweeping the nation for some time; and has gone all but unreported by the Mainstream Media.  (And they're usually so good at reporting famine, death, and disaster...) 

What, you tell me that there's no such thing as the JBSH&HSD!  I beg to differ.  In fact the staff of this high level department occupies the area in the attic at our Headquarters, right next to the DJBSS (Department of Just Blowing Smoke Security) in space we created by stacking more of the empty cigar boxes and old tin-foil hats stored up there.  At Just Blowing Smoke, we figure if creating departments whenever they want to to tackle problems that may or may not exist is good enough for the government, it's good enough for us.

The contagion once again sweeping the nation is indiscriminate in nature; failing to recognize race, gender, or age in its deadly attacks (though curiously, it seems to have little of no effect on the very young).  Neither does it have any respect for political persuasion, finding victims among Democrats, Republican, and Independents alike (though again, Libertarians seem mostly immune).  This scourge, now found to have been a recurring and often overlooked affliction has been called by many names over the years, most popularly "having you head up your own arse"; but has currently been designated by the CDC as:   ... Cranial / Rectal Inversion.

Those afflicted with this deadly malady may be recognized by the following symptoms.

• A willing and unquestioning belief that the stories they read in newspapers and see on television news programs are both factually correct and true
• A likewise intransigent belief in the pronouncements of politicians regardless of previous records of fallibility or the suspension of common sense required to do so
• An unsupportable belief that things were much simpler and far better in the "Good Old Days"
• A strange inability or unwillingness to check the facts on which they base their most fervently held opinions, preferring instead to have their basic assumptions about life handed to them on a silver platter by media personalities; many of whom pick and choose their own version of the facts for no better reason than to make their shows entertaining
• A marked certainty that things will get better if we can just put one political party in charge of government for a while (For some reason, it doesn't seem to matter in general which one, though individual sufferers are adamant about their particular choice, once made.) 
• An assurance that the US can spend its way out of the horrendous debt that it has incurred if it only spends enough
• An absolute inability to perform simple math functions, manifested by attempts to subtract government spending from government revenue and always coming up with a positive number.
• An unaccountable faith that Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D Roosevelt, and Lyndon B Johnson were good presidents (Many others feel the same way about Richard Nixon and George W Bush, in the red vs blue strain of the disease.)
• An almost dogmatic conviction that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will be just fine if we can pick the pockets of a few of the rich bastards in this country 
• A misguided though adamant presumption that the results of the next election will put things right

If it seems like most of this thinking is absolute crap, consider the proximity of the seat of thinking to the orifice of defecation considered to descriptive of the disease.  Not only does such an affliction present difficulties in seeing the facts (owing to the tortuous pose required), but one cannot help but think that the back pain incurred by being hunched over in such a position cannot help but make one cranky and short-tempered.

Regular self-examination is not required (and can be rather messy anyway).  You should be able to recognize whether you are showing symptoms or suffering from the disease by the expressions on the faces of friends and family around you, as well as their willingness (or lack thereof) to be close to you. Be careful however, when you recognize these symptoms in others, as all contractors are carriers of this dreaded condition.  

While there is no cure for Cranial / Rectal inversion, the disease can be put into remission through daily use of doubt and skepticism, and minimal contact with newspapers and national television news.  Broadcasts of most of cable news networks should be carefully rationed; and "The O'Reilly Factor", "The Sean Hannity Show", or anything with Chris Matthews on it should be avoided at all costs. (Hell, just avoid MSNBC all together.)  Regular attempts to reach your own conclusions through facts unedited by news readers, talking heads, and pundits pimping their latest book can also be an effective prophylactic treatment.

Good luck out there, and by all means ... Keep you heads up!