The Rubber Ceiling

Paul Krugman recently wrote ". . . future historians will probably look back at the 2010 election as a catastrophe for America, one that condemned the nation to years of political chaos and economic weakness."

To prove just how wrong Mr. Krugman was in that assessment, Inside the Hotdog Factory has taken its time machine 25 years into the future to see, firsthand, just what historians will say about the 2010 mid-term election in the United States of America.

Film footage and taped conversations, unfortunately, did not survive the journey back through time to November 2010, but Miles Blank, Inside the Hotdog Factory's time-roving investigator has submitted this report:

Journalist and Nobel Laureate, Paul Krugman, once wrote that future historians would pay particular attention and give inordinate weight to the 2010 mid-term American elections, seeing it as a watershed moment in American history that ushered in political chaos and economic weakness.

My journey to 2035 has proven that the 2010 mid-term election were all but forgotten.

Sure, there was plenty of political chaos in the United Wal-Mart States of Costco and Kentucky Fried Chicken (the name of the country changing in 2021 when corporate sponsorship was needed to stave off the Chinese foreclosure on the bankrupt nation), but there always had been plenty of that.

The date and event, however, that most historians of the future examined was June 2035 when the government and capitalhood of the nation was moved from Washington, D.C., to Wall Street.

The rightwing, hermaphrodite daughter of former Fox News personality, Christine O'Donnell, who went by the name Flak McWinkle, won election to the Oblong Office in 2024.

McWinkle's platform harkened back to her mother's moral stands, being entirely comprised of fighting the evils of masturbation.

As a hermaphrodite, McWinkle claimed to struggle with twice the temptation and therefore was twice the person for not giving in to the temptation.

Although food riots were commonplace in 2024 America, along with rampant, expanding unemployment, infant mortality and mass evictions as wealthy bankers and corporations bought up whole cities and turned out their citizens, Fox News and the Patriot Anti-Colonial Supreme Court Party of the Constitution made masturbation the key issue of the election.

Ezekiel Basselwaite, McWinkle's Democratic opponent, was no match for the moral onslaught.

A former data programmer and community organizer, Basselwaite wore his masturbatorship in his nervous gaze and sweaty brow. His pasty, clammy hands were those of a "self-abusing Communist who performed onanist acts to visions of his grandparents engaged in carnal connectivity," said Lush Rimjob, rightwing Pundit Extraordinaire, on his syndicated radio show.

Who could overcome such a devastating disassembly of one's values?

Not Basselwaite.

Among Flak McWinkle's first acts as president, she "listened to the people."

Unfortunately, for the vast majority of the American population, "the people" President McWinkle listened to so intently were the people who ran Wall Street.

With the backing of the Supreme Court, the last five winners of Dancing With the Stars, as well as the Congress or the Senate -- no one reliably recorded which chamber it was -- President McWinkle turned the government over to what she called "The rawest and rarest form of freedom and democracy: the free market."

Legislation would be decided by the market.

And "the people" cheered --

-- wealthy, Wall Street people.

* * *

We're adults. We can speak freely.

With the American mid-term elections over with, it's time to get a few things straight.

Recent headline on Reddit.com: "At $4 Billion, Midterm Elections Poised to Become Most Expensive Non-Presidential Vote in US History. (A gov't of/for/by 'the people'?!)"

America is Club Med for the wealthy.

If not you're not worth at least $10 million, your presence is merely tolerated by those who have that kind of net worth -- tolerated with a shrinking fuse of patience.

The wealthy either want you to do their landscape work -- at a wage of about .30 cents a day -- as an organ donor in case they blow a liver on their Dom Perignon, or as fleshy fodder for the military.

It amazes how no one seems to catch on to the tired old pattern with the Repugnicans.

On their way out of office, they always turn the cannons onto the floor boards. Governor John Engler did it when he left office in Michigan. Governor Jennifer Granholm wasn't a super governor, but she spent much of her first term fixing the mess Engler had left.

Bush the First left Bill Clinton an economy in complete disarray.

Bush the Second left Barak Obama an economy on the verge of utter collapse.

It's as though the Repugs and Democrats were created by the WWF. They perfectly compliment each other.

The Repugs are the dullard bullies; the warmongers, the money-worshippers, the born-again gangsters who bludgeon people with the cross of Jesus Christ.

The Dems are bright and idealistic, but possess absolutely no backbone. They are very much corruptible by virtue of believing themselves incorruptible. Overall, the Dems are inclined to do more of the right things than the Repugs, but they have no conviction, no spiritual muscle, no blood in their veins.

And round and round they go every election cycle.

The election of 2000 will viewed probably be viewed by future historians as the watershed moment when America's mask finally fell off -- when the Rubber Ceiling was broken by Geoge W. Bush, finally showing that competence, intelligence and character were meaningless in American politics. In fact, smarts is a distinct liability in being elected.

How delusional is America? George W. Bush believes he was the "dissenting voice" on going into Iraq.