Japanese Beetles, Congress & the President

Which have the smaller brains, members of Congress or Japanese Beetles? If you answered Congress you earned yourself an A and congratulations to you. The rest of you need to move on with your life.

It appears that our ineffectual, ever compromising away anything that might help the poor, the middle class, the elderly, the sick and infirm to the benefit of millionaires, billionaires, wall street, banks, corporations, etc., President is going that route again. The latest proposal to increase the debt ceiling has spending cuts of $3 trillion, no revenues, and another cut of spending 6 months from now to be determined by a "super-Congress". And guess what? Not a single penny in new revenues! Obama has turned out to be a Democrat's nightmare and a progressive's horror show. As Paul Krugman opined in a recent column, "Obama is not the one we've been waiting for."

Let's hope there are enough Democrats in the House and Senate to oppose this final minute compromise and see if Obama has the balls to invoke the 14th amendment and raise the debt ceiling on his own. Fuck the Tea Party, fuck Boner, fuck McConnell. Lieberman, too. And there's another couple of hundred in the hallowed halls that should have it stuck to them, too. We have a sick, corrupt to the core political system and nothing's changed since Obama's 'transformational' election in 2008.

Japanese beetles emerge from the ground then fly to the top of my pole beans. I seldom find them on lower levels, where they would be better hidden and more able to escape my can of gooey soapy water. Once they hit that their brief existence quickly passes on into the darkness of the beetle afterlife. If these things were smart they would never leave the ground in the first place, where a horde of humans armed with poisons, fly swatters, and cans of soapy water await to beat them back. A few brave souls squash them with their fingers, but the stink that ensues does not make that a viable option for this gardener.

But wait. If a Japanese beetle is smarter than a member of Congress, maybe they're smarter than the President of the United States as well. We've never tried a beetle in office before, maybe the time is now.