Excommunication By State

I am a Virginian born and bred. My mother's people were Virginians before Virginia was Virginia. They met the first settlers when they arrived to found Jamestown in 1607. One married John Rolfe. She rests a few miles down the road from me here in England, for her sins. For mine, I'll rest in the Commonwealth, I hope.

I am a proud Virginian and proud of the people who made the Commonwealth great. Because of Virginians, we have a Constitution (James Madison), a Declaration of Independence (Thomas Jefferson) and a Bill of Rights (George Mason). We can claim the first President and the first woman to be elected to the British Parliament. We might have been stupid enough to house the capital of the Confederacy, but in 1989, we elected the first African American governor to preside over that old capital, and that's when Derval Patrick was still in short trousers.

Johnnie Cash married a Virginian. So did Al Gore.

We've given America eight Presidents, and we're waiting on Number Nine - please, may he or she be a Democrat.

But, Lord, we do have some low-hanging fruit in the state, and when it hangs low, it hangs low.

Now, being a fruit-producing state, there are two types of low-hanging fruit. One's the sort that just evolves to a certain point and then gets no further. It's a poor fruit and a victim of circumstance, like poor education and no occupational opportunity or general poverty, that produces a Lindie England. With a bit more nurturing and a lot of attention from people in a position to act as benefactors (i.e., responsible representatives of the people), a lot of Lyndies could have been avoided.

But it's the second type of low-hanger that's troublesome. And that's a low-hanging fruit which is deliberately, almost arrogantly, swaybacked, looking out for its own brand and thinking about no other even though this fruit is smack dab in a position to be noticed.

And just to be truly fair and balanced, there's a piece of low-hanging fruit from the Right and another one from the Left swinging from an apple orchard someplace in Eastern Virginia.

Lord, what do we do with assholes like Eric Cantor and Ed Schultz?

The boys from Richmond and Norfolk just keep on piling embarrassment on the Commonwealth.

Eric's the Republican - the one who always reminds you of Tom Sawyer's tattletale brother, Sid, who never put a foot wrong, always dotted his i's and crossed his t's and never failed to say yes ma'am to Aunt Polly. But when her back was turned, it was Sid, who was always miming the way she limped or making faces.

Ed's the Democrat - the one who makes you think of Judd Frye in Oklahoma, the Neanderthal who could have been redeemed by Laurie's love but wasn't, who lost his temper and fell in a fight won by Curly. Ed's the bull in a china shop who runs off too much at the mouth, gets told off by the teacher, then steals some wimpier kid's lunch money.

Our Eric's been a naughty boy, as The Huffington Post explains:-

House Democrats are circulating a resolution accusing House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) of having a conflict of interest in the debt ceiling debate, a move that could provide an awkward C-SPAN moment for one of the lead Republicans in the budget negotiations.
The resolution goes after Cantor's investment in ProShares Trust Ultrashort 20+ Year Treasury ETF, a fund that "takes a short position in long-dated government bonds."
The fund is essentially a bet against U.S. government bonds. If the debt ceiling is not raised and the United States defaults on its debts, the value of Cantor's fund would likely increase.
The Democratic resolution, obtained by The Huffington Post from a Democratic source on the Hill, argues that Cantor "stands to profit from U.S. treasury default, which thereby raises the appearance of a conflict of interest," and that he "may be sabotaging [debt ceiling] negotiations for his own personal gain."

Oo-er. That is not the kind of thing a good Virginia boy is raised to do. Well, not unless you're trailer trash. As my elderly aunt would say, Eric's mama ought to turn him over and wail the hell out of his sorry ass for doing something like that. Why, betting against an economic failure of the US Government and actually surreptitiously sabotaging debt ceiling negotiations for personal gain ... that's tantamount to treason! That's despicable, onerous and downright hateful.

And Ed hasn't been much better.

Back last year, Ed got mad at President Obama's Press Secretary, who got mad at people like Ed, who were supposed to be on the President's side, but sought to criticize every little thing he did, said or planned to do or say. Nothing he did was ever good enough to allay the criticism. So Robert Gibbs called out the so-called Professional Left, and Ed lost his temper. (Virginians are famous for losing their tempers).

Well, Ed lost his temper so much, that he told the sheeple - I mean, he advised the people who watched him on television or listened to his radio show not to vote in the 2010 midterms. Teach the Democrats, teach the President a lesson, he said. Show them how much their criticism hurt the base which got them elected.

The base? (Cough, cough) ... The base? The base is solid, Ed. The base doesn't go off on one when it doesn't get instantly gratified. I didn't think there were that many stupid people in America, but - hell - I'm from Virginia, so I guess there must be someone out there on the Left Coast or up in the Northeast lazy enough to let a Southside boy like Ed do their thinking, because those damned people just stayed at home and he handed the key to the House door to Eric ... so Eric could cook the books, back out of the debt ceiling negotiations and hope the government tanked all around. The President would lose, John Boehner would lose, Eric would be chosen Speaker and laugh all the way to the bank.

But now, sixteen months before the General Election of 2012, Ed's ranting the same old song:

Don't vote! If the Democrats, if Obama cuts entitlements like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, DON'T VOTE!

That's right. Don't vote, and let Eric's party come in and really cut entitlements. You see, Ed's latest fearmongering was based on an anonymous rumour, a Chinese whisper, a clever piece of ratfuckery sucked up by The Washington Post and The New York Times. When someone finally got up off their ass and investigated, they found that any proposed "cut" in Social Security was to cut the cost-of-living increase of $34.41 per month to $34.27 per month. A cut of fourteen cents per month - $1.68 per annum.

So for that, Ed says, don't vote. Hand everything to the Republicans who won't just cut, they'll hatchet.

Totally irresponsible and totally wrong.

I am ashamed to share the status of Virginian with these two dumbasses. So I propose a punishment: Excommunication by State.

First, I would have the pair of them carted down I-95 and I-64 on a flat-bed truck, slowing along the way to allow people assembled along the sidelines of the route to pelt refuse at them. I would take them to Williamsburg, where I would lock them in the public stocks and give people the opportunity to hurl some of the rotten, worm-infested apples and peaches from our orchards, using their heads as targets. They would then be ceremoniously dumped with the contents of two chamber pots, before being tarred, feathered and ridden on the back of Macaca Allen back to Richmond and onto the shores of the James, where they'd be tossed in a burning boat (along with Macaca) and cast out to sea and their fates.

And as the wind whistled in off the Eastern Shore each evening, we could all hear Ed and Eric, crying for their mamas.