Why listen to the Grand Old Party at all? You might think we’re silencing some important voices, but as it turns out not so much. This isn’t about the 1st Amendment. They can keep talking, I just don’t think listening has proven horribly productive. Sure people listen to the psych patient during the Haldol injection, but shouldn’t we be focusing on the hold so no one gets hurt initiating the restraint?

Republican s haven’t really been right about anything since that television show Cheers was popular. Why, you ask? Anyone showing even the pre-limbic precursors of reason is immediately ejected from their tent. Norm!! …where everybody knows your lame. Sorry, miles away….Boston, actually.

I know I harp on this. I know I’m a broken record, but it’s a funny record…and thankfully most of it has been expunged. Let’s start with some good news. Arizona is actually balancing its budget better and faster than most states. Of course, they tanked more than most states, but here’s my concern with our alleged “progress”. It’s not the fact our Governor, Jan Brewer, seems clueless on a wide variety of topics, it’s that her long term plan is not a solution. It’s filled with expensive plot complications. Her cuts are reckless and ill-conceived, aka, she’ll remain in AZ politics for a long long time. Here’s some of the things I’ve seen, first hand. And I’m sure it’s just the tip of the Ice Queen. Say, how does an Ice Queen like Brewer survive in the heart of the Sonoran Desert? Oops, heart and Brewer/same sentence. Please edit.

This year in Maricopa County—the populous one that includes Phoenix—Governor Brewer denied matching Federal funds for homeless children. This is not a joke. Phoenix is where most of the homeless kids across the state wind up and now social worker types can’t do anything except direct them to the nearest people wafer factory. Soylent Green, it’s children! Hooray for savings.

You might say, child homelessness is decreasing so let’s save some money, but that is simply not the case. And next week, after I throw my daughter out onto the streets, those numbers are only going to get worse.

Talk about missing patterns, what do you think happens when you don’t support children living in a community shelter? Do they go away like magic? As it turns out, not so much. We know what they do: prostitute, spread STDs, steal, and sell drugs, or as I call them “weekends”. They end up in hospitals, rehabs, and foster homes which cost way more than the free fifty-seven dollars Brewer passed on. I work directly with the associated costs for housing children and one child can cost us gazillions of dollars down the road. Hey, I didn’t say I was any good at it.

In Northern Arizona it was Jan Brewer who helped defund my county to the point where a dangerous game started. Here’s how it’s played:

“So you want to kill yourself or a lot of other people? Well, we don’t have funds for that shit anymore so please don’t. Have a cookie!”

It’s better than last year, when we tried to appease them by handing out semi-automatic weapons. I think I told that one bald guy, “Giffords is in town. She’s the problem, go talk to her.” Yeah, I’m just doing the people’s work.

Meanwhile, Obama has rightly targeted access to mental illness as a big part of this problem. Republicans will retaliate, of course, by starting Arm the Criminally Insane Felons for Freedom (ACIFF). Don’t forget free bullet Fridays! That bunch is always on target.

Seriously, I know people who have died because of these cuts, but thankfully none of them have taken out a pre-school on their way out…yet. Hooray for savings! Brewer has since finalized her plan by passing the Please-Don’t-Kill-Anyone-Today, Just-Go-Have-A-Cookie Initiative. Baking for Columbine? Maybe one Oreo could have saved those kids in Connecticut, right Jan? I can’t wait until you’re taken to task for this shit, you crazy blankety blank, blank. I’m sorry, that last blank was uncalled for.

Fact alert: defunding certain things costs society much more in the long run. And Republicans are always ready to raise the old misery index in the name of fecal conservatism. Cutting cheap services for costly ones is just plain dumb. For other examples of dumb, just see any of their other Republican budget proposal.

We had another program gutted in my town that was designed to keep those highest-utilizers off the streets. We know what work for people who make a living traveling from detox to rehab to emergency room. I am not talking about the Ghetto Shaman this time; they have banned him from such places. But if you defund programs that are cheap and effective, everyone loses—both the people and the bean counters.

In AZ over the last few years Behavioral health has already been cut somewhere to the tune of 27% with more on the horizon. How about for every 10% you cut from critical services, we cut 1% from the Defense Department? Speaking of which, did you know that after every war in American history there has been a corresponding decrease in military funding? Sounds real obvious, right?…well, not this time. Obama’s Defense budget is about where Cheney’s would be. You see, Darth Cheney is a little liberal compared to the new brand of Democrat.

Those dips in the graph above occurred after each war, except the War on Reason, of course, which the GOP plans to win! No Neuron left behind?

Here’s another pattern missed. Did you know that right-to -work states are attractive to businesses? It’s also part of Arizona’s recovery plan. Umm, but what happens when we’re all right-to-work states? Haven’t thought that far yet, huh? I work in one of those. It’s not pleasant. What happens when the last union dies? The GOP thinks workers and admin will all be singing Kumbaya. Seriously, that’s what they think. They think our sociopathic CEOs will become more labor friendly when the playing field is leveled…er, for them. When you say the words Labor & Industry standards in Arizona, that phrase is immediately followed by one or more rifles cocking. This also works similarly when you say Obama, Rachel Maddow, or the keg kicked.

Here’s another missed pattern. Oh, and it kind of means we’re screwed as a planet. This chart is courtesy of The Dish.

So out of all the peer-reviewed studies on climate change EVER, it turns out only 24 of them don’t think it’s happening…er, out of a gazillion. Hey, can you guess which 24 studies were funded by the Koch Brothers and featured on Fox News? Thanks Fox News for staying consistently wrong on some many important topics. You were so worried about not raising taxes to fund your wars, you missed the whole raising sea levels thing.

And how about those ‘fiscal cliff’ negotiations? The GOP can never start any negotiations where they’re supposed to…but I already covered this here. The wrong remains the same, eh? Isn’t that a Zeppelin song?

Okay, so most of us have figured out we need more revenues as well as serious spending cuts, which is immediately translated by Republicans as “that could lead to bestiality!” I think Santorum said that during the fiscal negotiations of 2011. Why, why, why do we always have to drag them kicking and screaming into reality? Don’t we have other more important things to worry about, like Obama’s birth certificate? Republicans are like the Amish, only a little less worldly. Or how about this one:

The GOP: We’re so far right we’re out in left field? Okay, I’ll stop…er, when they do.

The fiscal negotiations suck. In a post years ago I said negotiations begin thusly: at what income level should tax rates go up? I said this ages ago! Okay, I just checked, 7/7/11. Here’s the quote:

“Hear ye, hear ye: the negotiating will be limited to this: for what income group will the Bush tax cuts expire? Will it be for those earning over $250,000 a year? over $500,000? over a $1M? Let the real negotiating begin!”

—Mick Zano

Yet they still can’t figure this shit out, even now?…even after a presidential election? This isn’t even my job! Have I mentioned I’m a spoof bloggerist? To everything turn, turn, turn. They have no reason, turn, turn, turn. If they had listened to yours truly, we could have focused on actually cutting something—except cheese. Meanwhile, Boehner, all bleary eyed, is just getting there now like some demented form of Rep. Van Winkle. Sorry about that one, it’s the sleep deprivation. I’m typing as fast as I can, Mr. Winslow, honest. The Crank still owes you a feature, so why don’t you yell at him?

Even when the Speaker offered hikes for those making over a million, there’s that pesky bat-shit base I keep harping about—which now can be translated roughly as your average Fox News viewer. Sorry, I think that’s news. Speaking of which, Grover Norquist needs to be deported. I don’t care where…what? I don’t care! Try getting a lead from that ancestry.com thing. Actually, Old Grover is bending logic again to concede to Boehner’s last offer. But it doesn’t matter. Why? Umm, it’s what I’ve been telling ya’s….welcome to the jungle, it gets worse here every day. That’s why I keep covering this shit. Norquist’s brand of bat-shit conservatism is sooo last week. There’s always going to be someone more severely conservative, more bat-shit, to take up the tax fee torch. Talk about whack-a-mole. Remember that bozo Brent Bozell? The one I did that mock interview with a couple of weeks back, here? Now he, along with many others, are condemning Norquist for being too liberal! They’re on an unstoppable trajectory toward my psych unit…and we don’t have nearly enough beds! Or, thanks to Jan Brewer, the funding. Just when you think they can’t possible get less insightful, a new manifestation, a new metamorphosis occurs that makes me think fondly back to the last news cycle. They’re like the butterfly that turns into the moth that crawls up Newt Gingrich’s ass. Hey, at least no one can blame me for plagiarism.

Make no mistake, they’re missing another pattern. It’s so sad that instead of facing the problems of this reality, the GOP has chosen to invent another one.

“This party is a threat to democratic discourse and to fiscal sanity. Their ideological mania knows no prudential restraint at all,” and, “Actually, the largest tax increase in American history was written into the tax cuts themselves, if they failed to produce enough revenue to finance the government. Which they didn’t. The reason we may go over the cliff is entirely because the GOP is more ideological than it is responsible”

—Andrew Sullivan

This might come as a surprise to some you, but I’m not a Senator. I do not attend, or, in John McCain’s case, blow-off intelligence briefings about issues I claim to care so much about. I derive my scant knowledge from the news, yet…take Benghazi for instance. No really take it. An independent panel discovered gross negligence on the part of the State Department responsible for securing that embassy. Um, I said day two, if there’s any scandal here it’s during the build up to the incident. I said that here, Mr. McCan’t. I have often said McCain is one their best and brightest and yet he’s bested again by comedian spoof blogger. Yes, liberal comedians are smarter than any of them. I’m not bragging, I’m f-ing frightened.

You know what the panel said about the Obama Administration’s handling of the incident’s aftermath? There was no wrong doing, period. So the GOP made Benghazi-gate out of the post Benghazi events, when they should have focused on events leading up to the incident. Besides, what are you complaining about? Liberals were finally trying to cut some spending. For this one, I have to admit I was cued in by the GOP. You can set your watch to this. They focus over there, which cues me to look elsewhere. Works every time. Hey, they might land me a Pulitzer yet! Another three weeks of Fox News turns out to be bullshit. Imagine that.

Republicans have a rigidity of thought not seen since The Rain Man marathon over on AMC. I guess you can’t see patterns when you’re seeing unicorns. I am sick and tired of those AM radioers lecturing me about freedom when they supported the Patriot Act. I am sick and tired of the same people who don’t pay for anything lecturing me about fiscal conservatism. And I am really sick and tired of those people who destroyed the slippery slope argument…oh, you didn’t know they ruined that too? There is no such thing as the slippery slope argument anymore. They broke it. Even I used the slippery slope argument back in the day, but now that’s a slippery slope. Homosexuality leads to bigamy leads to bestiality? Really? Providing a society with healthcare is a slippery slope to socialism and to alien colonization? Really? Banning semi-automatic weapons for the criminally insane leads to Charlton Heston rising from the grave and heralding the zombie apocalypse? Really?

Here’s the Zano four point solution:

1. End extreme gerrymandering, which is the only thing keeping the GOP in the House.

2. End the abuses of the filibuster as the need for a supermajority to do anything is not working horribly well, if you haven’t noticed (speaking of which, why haven’t Republicans noticed?).

3. Put the GOP out of its misery once and for all, because this wounded and dangerous animal is not going down without taking us with them.

I know that’s only three. The last one I wrote on a bar coaster and now I can’t find it. Crap. And it was the best one!