Obama Should Immediately Appoint an Ambassador to Moronia (The Ten Billionth Entry in the "Obama Should" Category)

This week is when 99% of everything written on the internet starts with some variant of "Obama should..." and I'm such a conformist, I don't want to be any different. So here's my contribution: What Obama should do ASAP is appoint an Ambassador to Moronia.

Where is Moronia? You won't find it on any map, in the same way you won't find Funkytown, The Nation of Islam, or The State of Confusion in any atlas. Though it sounds like a physical place, Moronia isn't defined by a landmass covered with invisible lines that tempt humans to kill those living on the opposite side of those lines.

As you probably have figured out (if you haven't, you may be a citizen!) Moronia is The Nation of Morons. They can live anyplace on the geographical globe (though they apparently tend to coagulate in Midland, Texas.) In the space defined by mind, they are all in one place: jammed up their own asses.

Moronians (aka morons) are people who, just a few days ago, comprised the 22% who felt G. W. Bush had done a good job as president. (Source.)

They are the people who recently at a Bush fund-raiser in Midland, Texas, chanted "Four More Years!" To quote my main man Keith Olbermann: "Maybe they didn't want him back." (Source.)

I know, I know, we're supposed to be healing now. We're supposed to come together and, how would President Obama say it? Put aside partisan rancor. I love that kind of talk. I'm a hippie at heart. I love the idea of people who dislike each other coming together for a greater good. I almost cried when a dying Darth Vader chucked the Emperor down the tube in a final act of redemption. What nerd didn't?

Sadly, over the years, skeptical me has trumped the nerd and hippie within. I've come to learn that reaching one's hand out has a slim chance of working, because some people are cruel, petty, selfish, spiteful. In short, they are just fuckin' morons!

That should explain my call for an Ambassador to Moronia. We need someone to figure out exactly what morons are thinking when they claim Bush did a great job, when they chant "Four More Years!" when eight years was nine too many. What makes the people of Moronia tick? What criteria are they using to arrive at their assessments? Do they think a dive-bombing Dow Jones is good? Do they think losing 30-plus percent of their 401k is groovy? That a large national debt will just vanish? That our fellow humans dying in Iraq is worth cheering for?

Then again, do we really need The Nation of Morons? If they are a small enough minority, maybe we can just over-power them. That's preferably the case, but I've never been able to settle in my mind whether the majority of people are morons or not. Some days it seems like a pitched battle, with morons vs. non-morons switching their proportions 49-51% back and forth with the frequency of a strobe light.

Morons are people, too. I'd like to reach out to them, but how do you reach out to someone who is okay with war? Who is okay with people being poor? Who can accept elderly people without healthcare? Who can live next door to someone dying of poverty and shrug? Who want to rewrite the U.S. Constitution just to prevent private activities behind closed doors between consenting adults?

The long-haired hippie freak side of me is thnking, "Hey hep-cat, your verbal tones are harshing my aura." Well, fuck your aura! Take a shower and tell me what Morons are thinking! I want to hold hands with everyone too, but it's kind of hard when they're clinging to their guns, claiming that's their guarantee of freedom (meanwhile their retirement account is looted. Morons!)

Until we reach out to the Citizens of Moronia, getting logical, intelligent, compassionate things done will be an uphill battle. For those of you against immigration (despite what's written on The Statue Of Liberty) I might have to reluctantly agree: let's close our borders to morons!

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Larry Nocella is the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? available on Amazon. For more info, visit his website at http://www.larrynocella.com/.

Should George W. Bush and Dick Cheney Hang Until Dead? Or, Would a Second 9/11 Have Been Preferable to an eight-year Bush-Cheney regime?

I'm not a crazy Fox News pundit. I'm not a right-wing whack job performance artist trying to sell books and using the tired old strategy of saying something so violently outrageous that I score some blips on a slow news day.

I have a functioning conscience, heart and brain. Unlike a Fox News pundit, I don't embody all the character flaws from The Wizard of Oz rolled into one. As a result, I don't sling around death wishes against people just because I disagree with them or just because I don't like them. If I did that then you would be reading about how anyone who likes that show The Hills should be boiled alive in acid.

My point is, it isn't every day and for the slightest infraction that I seriously request someone die or be executed. I'm giving you all this background so you know that it's a rare and exceptional event when I suggest that someone should go on trial for crimes where the penalty, if found guilty, include a death sentence.

Despite my hesitation to play armchair executioner, I find myself unable to escape the wish that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney be tried for crimes against humanity and if found guilty, they should hang just like Saddam Hussein. What crimes am I referring to? I guess with those two it would help to be more specific. I'm referring to the fact that Bush and Cheney deliberately deceived Congress and the American people in order to start a war with Iraq. There are a lot of other crimes those could be held to account for, but in my mind, starting a war is big enough to warrant a trial all on its own. All the other stuff? Supporting torture, ignoring the constitution, those can be additional charges.

The one thing the few remaining morons who still support Bush-Cheney fall back on is, "Well, have we been attacked lately? Has there been another 9/11?" No. There hasn't. I guess to a Bush-Cheney supporter, presidents get a one-massive-terror-attack mulligan, but no mulligans for lying about blowjobs.

No, there hasn't been a second 9/11, but given the choice between that and Bush-Cheney in power, a second 9/11 would have been much more preferable.

Let's compare. From 9/11, around 3,000 people died. Multiply by two, that's 6,000. That is far fewer people than have died in Iraq as of now: 4,221 Americans plus over 90,000 Iraqis (SOURCE: Iraq Body Count.)

The cost of 9/11 to the U.S. economy was, oh, let's overestimate it at $200 billion, though sources (Wikipedia, Naval Center for Contemporary Conflict) say it was less. Even doubled, that's still well below the debt we've been rammed into thanks to Bush and his policies: at least $700 billion.

Regarding lost jobs: a recent CNNMoney headline says, Jobless claims highest since Sept. 11 attacks, but that just refers to the number of new jobless claims over one week (the week of the article and the week following 9/11). When you add up how many total over the Bush-Cheney years, it's no surprise the article also states the number of unemployed in America is the highest since 1983.

I could go on and on and on, but I've seen enough. If you can't agree that a second 9/11 would have been preferable to eight years of Bush-Cheney, I understand. It sounds radical, but the facts support it. I don't mean to belittle the terror of 9/11 by wishing to live through it again, even though I only "lived through it" by seeing it on TV. I simply want to put it in perspective. It was one day, it was one horrible impact, but it is dwarfed by the sustained campaign of dismantling by malicious insiders over the course of eight years. The horror and fear brought about by Bush-Cheney will echo down the years and decades, and both you and I and every single other American are living through it, not just watching it on television.

Imagine the number that will die due to them being unable to afford medical care, or needing to work multiple jobs, or due to a failing infrastructure. Osama bin Laden put us all in direct, immediate harm, then vanished. Bush and Cheney have damaged our livelihood far worse for years to come. I'd like to see them held to account in some more meaningful way other than being mocked on The Daily Show.

This all leads to my request for their trial. See? I'm so unlike a Fox News pundit, I still can't just out and out call for their heads, as much as they deserve that. Let them go to trial. I'm confident they would be found guilty. Imagining it might happen, if they both hung, I wouldn't celebrate, but I'd understand it was necessary, for what they purposefully did to you, to me, to humanity, to our nation, and the generations to come.

To sacrifice two lives for the thousands of lives lost? That is not an act of revenge, but an act of justice.

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Larry Nocella is the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? available on Amazon. For more info, visit his website at http://www.larrynocella.com/.