Deportation, American-Style

Congress will take on immigration reform soon. If the Democrats can’t pass any sort of respectable healthcare bill, they will have to tack right if they wish to save their asses in the midterm elections. It could get very ugly very quickly, and no doubt the birthers and others of their ilk will get a new lease on life.

I will always be the first to come to the defense of immigrants. Most work far harder than the smartphone and screenplay-obsessed buffoons who make up a preponderance of the populace of my hometown Los Angeles. Immigrants are also far more likely to embrace God and family values than those native to the Red States, whose rates of adultery and divorce are so high it’s like watching a Noel Coward play – minus the tuxes and teeth.

Which brings me to a modest proposal: to kick off reform, why not deport some actual American citizens? After all, the notion behind immigration “reform” is to make the country a more livable place, where the people suspected of abusing our notions of fair play are sent back to where they came from – or at least someplace far away from the rest of “us.”

Therefore, I’ve come up with list of the top 10 Americans who should be deported:

1. Joe Lieberman. Lieberman’s alter-ego, Droopy the dog, is adored in France, where it was recently placed on a postage stamp.  Lieberman is widely detested here, mostly for single-handedly killing the public option and his indirect help in getting George W. Bush named president in 2000. He should be placed on a packet steamer.

FINAL DESTINATION: Lieberman considers himself a religious man, even though he treats corporate interests with far more reverence than his constituents. Therefore he should be deported to Yemen, where the locals have demonstrated enormous tolerance for other religions.

2. Alberto Gonzales. Fortunately, neither Gonzales’ grandparents (who migrated here illegally) or his mother and father lived to see him use the office of Attorney General to rationalize torturing other human beings. Or when called to the carpet by Congress, pretending he had the intellectual capacity of the serape-sporting, monosyllabic Mexican Mel Blanc played on “The Jack Benny Program.” The only thing conspicuous by its absence from Gonzales’ resume is prison time. followed by deportation.

FINAL DESTINATION: Back to old Mexico. Gonzales’ fondness for law flouting and waterboarding would make him a fine regional police chief. And the moral indignation he regularly displayed as AG would make it only a matter of time before he crossed the wrong drug kingpin, resulting in the inevitable happy ending.

3. Larry Craig. The former U.S. Senator from Idaho was a notorious gay-basher in public. In private he had a predilection for a wide stance, no doubt the better to take it in the…well, you know. The collision of his private desires with a public restroom brought him down, but still didn’t cause the Republican Party to confront the fact that way too many of its most prominent members have jammed themselves rather uncomfortably in the closet.

FINAL DESTINATION: Canada is too close for comfort. So it’s either Spain or the Netherlands, where same-sex marriage is legal. Perhaps he and fellow closeted former member of Congress Mark Foley can start new lives together. Mark can keep Larry out of public bathrooms, and Larry can keep Mark from little boys. Successful marriages have been built on less.

4. Orly Taitz. Twenty years ago, a dentist turned correspondence-school-educated lawyer who questions the President’s citizenship would have been roundly ignored. In today’s 24-hour news cycle, Taitz has become the Anne Coulter of the birther movement.

Taitz’ legal arguments as to why Obama should be kicked out of office are more horribly twisted than a train wreck. They have been thrown out of virtually very legal venue in the country, and one court – in Georgia of all places – even fined her $20,000 for misconduct. Yet, astonishingly, the California Bar has taken no actions to revoke her law license. But there is some hope: Taitz, unlike Obama, was actually born outside of this country. That makes her a ripe candidate for deportation. Since the U.S. Justice Department did an exquisite job stripping Emma Goldman of her naturalization and shipping her back to Russia 90 years ago, doing the same number on a moron like Taitz should be easy.

FINAL DESTINATION: Taitz’s birthplace of Moldova (she immigrated to Israel as a child) seems too easy. Perhaps being returned to one of Isarel’s neighbors, such as the Gaza Strip, would do the trick. I’m certain Hamas would welcome with open arms a bleached blonde Israeli loudmouth.

5. Michele Bachmann. I’m always stunned that this reactionary harridan actually has two law degrees. Every time she opens her mouth I feel the country’s collective I.Q. drop by at least several points – not exactly a phenomenon it needs at the moment. My favorite Bachmann crusade: her call to investigate Congress to see which of its members are “anti-American.” My favorite Bachmann bill: legislation to bar replacing the American dollar with foreign currency. For this groundbreaking work she draws a $160,000-a-year salary. I would gladly be that dumb for just half her pay.

FINAL DESTINATION: Iran. They treat women very well there. They also have no problem investigating their citizens’ patriotism. Enjoy!

6. Rupert Murdoch. Easily the worse Aussie import since “Men at Work.” He initially appeared harmless, only wishing to replicate his network of crude tabloid newspapers. Instead, the father of “Fox News” has done more to coarsen the debate than any native-born American. He also recently sunk his hooks into the Wall Street Journal, where its wacko opinion page is beginning to seep into its news coverage, slowly sinking another great newspaper.

FINAL DESTINATION: Back to Australia. Not the present day nation, but the one of the late 18^th century, when the Brits turned it into a penal colony. Minus his wealth and his media empire, he can look at it as a fresh start. Murdoch would no doubt prosper in virgin territory, and pushing the age of 80, I’m certain he would not waste what time was left.

7. Keith Olbermann. He’s witty, but uses his intelligence to be so overbearingly sanctimonious that he makes progressives look almost as bad as the right wingers. Listening to one of his 20-minute editorials is like the Bataan Death March, but without the enjoyment of the outdoors.

FINAL DESTINATION: He can actually stay, just not on MSNBC.

8. Sarah Palin. The New Yorker magazine noted in a recent article that no politician so convincingly erases the line between the governing and the governed. Which is a polite way of saying she’s even dumber than Michele Bachmann, but with an outside shot of actually becoming president one day. That the nation will be paying for the sins of the last decade for the next few decades means this simply cannot come to pass.

FINAL DESTINATION: Roosha. As  I noted in a previous entry, no place treats its citizens with more narrow-minded indifference. She would fit in there – like an iron glove.

9. Dick Cheney. One of the funniest and saddest lines in movie history is from “Dog Day Afternoon,” when Sonny (Al Pacino) asks his dimwitted bank-robbing partner Sal (the late, great John Cazale) which country he wanted to escape to. The answer: Wyoming. “Sal, Wyoming’s not a country,” Sonny replied. That may have been the case in 1975, when the movie was produced, but the state’s most famous son and history’s scariest vice president has proved otherwise. A hard-headed bastard like Alberto Gonzales, but a hundred times smarter and meaner, Cheney lived to undermine the Constitution and torture anyone who might have even looked at pictures of terrorists. Read the amazing tragicomic Wyoming stories of Annie Proulx, and it becomes clear the place is a factory for misfits and psychotics, its motto “The Equality State” the biggest fraud since the Teapot Dome – yet another fine Wyoming product.

FINAL DESTINATION: Cheney is about the only member of the Bush Administration who stuck around in Washington after he left office. Obviously, going home is very painful, so the hardscrabble nation of Wyoming is where he should go. With any luck, Cheney will be misidentified as a charging moose and be shot in the face by a hunter. As Cheney himself might say, do it to him before he does it to us – again.

10. George W. Bush. Jeez, what can I say? The most uninformed, incurious and cold-hearted leader this country ever had made Nixon look like Lincoln. He was just a couple of massive bailouts away from plunging the nation into total ruin. Even so, it will take God knows how long to recover from the frat party trashing left by Dubya and his minions. Fortunately, his thoroughly disgraceful tenure has been followed up by relative obscurity, and I picture him spending his days toiling to color in the books for his presidential library. Nevertheless, if he isn’t kicked out of the U.S. of A, , who should?

FINAL DESTINATION: In 2004, Bush requested funding for a mission to Mars. “We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirit,” he said at the time. In his case, I couldn’t agree more. We can put him in one of the shuttles that’s being retired next year, and just hit the “Ignition” button. Don’t let the Earth’s atmosphere kick you in the ass on the way out.

Y’all Wanna Move to Roosha?

“Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid.

As a nation we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’

When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.’ When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.” – Abraham Lincoln

How can I resist this quote when the burghers of the backwaters lined up this week to yet again worship at the moth-eaten, mad cow-diseased altar of Sarah Palin? According to the sly reporting of the New York Times, these people swore they would “take back their country” by doing everything in their power to get her into the White House. That they hadn’t read her new book or had any ideas what she would do if actually elected was beside the point.

Of course, if you purchase the secret redneck decoder ring (available at your local Wal-Mart), it all translates to: “Goddamn, what is this uppity Mooslim, Commie Socialist Nigra doing runnin’ MY country??? Lock away all the white wummin and get me my scopin’ rifle!”

Not unlike Barack Obama, Lincoln put up with this crap every single day of his political career until the nut cases indeed finally did him in. That quote – one of the few attributed to him that is dead on yet doesn’t soar – crystallizes the black exasperation he often felt. He represented a new paradigm: a bootstrapping backwoodsman with an intellectual’s temperament few people “got” until it was too late. The only previous President he had resembled to any degree was Andrew Jackson, like him a rural striver, but one fortunate enough to enjoy huge success as a commander during the War of 1812, and shrewd enough to exploit it for political gains. Otherwise, Jackson was just as hot-headed, paranoid and trigger-happy as his fellow Tennesseeans.

Indeed, Lincoln so alienated the Southern states that according to the eminent Civil War historian Shelby Foote, not even a “crank” redneck cast a vote for him in 1860. It’s fascinating that as recently as 50 years ago – when Foote used that term – that someone who thought Lincoln was fit for the presidency would be considered a crank.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, being one of the few mouth-smashing liberals in America, I believe it is time for the Sarah Palin rooters to leave the building. There is simply no rational explanation for their desire to elevate such a bumptious half-wit to such a powerful office. It only demonstrates this nation has too large an ignorant and prejudiced populace, one that refuses to be educated for its own good. Moreover, it will gladly use that ignorance to serve a malignant desire to imperil us all. At a time when there are simply too many short and long-term crises to solve, it would best serve the country to do what Lincoln did when he suspended habeus corpus during the Civil War – going beyond the Constitution in the short-term to preserve in the long-term.

Which is why I remembered the Great Emancipator’s quote, and why Russia would be the perfect destination for them. Here’s why:

1. Putin & Medvedev = Bush & Cheney…But Forever!

When George W. Bush said he looked Vladimir Putin in the eye in 2001 and was “able to get a sense of his soul,” it may have been the only intuitive observation of his entire presidency. Both men are glaringly alike: incurious, autocratic megalomaniacs who not only disdain the opposition, but believe it shouldn’t exist at all. Putin, as a matter fact, could be a template for the “unitary presidency,” that technocratic little term the neo-con fascists cobbled together during Bush’s first term as an excuse for marginalizing Congress and smashing the Constitution into rubble.

Vladmir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev's political relationship should calm all those recent Rooshan immigrants longing for the halcyon days of Bush and Cheney.

Putin was forced out of the presidency by term limits last year, but he assumed the presumably lesser prime minister’s role, with his dimwitted puppet Dmitry Medvedev assuming his old job. But really, everyone knows who’s calling the shots. Sound like a familiar relationship? Yet unlike the Bush/Cheney duet, these guys will have held power at least 16 years, and likely beyond that. This should be a very reassuring arrangement for the new arrivals.

2. The rich, and only the rich, are in charge

No bigger oligopoly exists on Earth than Roosha, where the only people who have the ears of politicians are the obscenely rich, and everyone else might as well live on Neptune – or else. Stepping out of line can still land you in one of those gulags Uncle Joe Stalin was so fond of. Indeed, only $150 annually is spent on healthcare per capita! Thousands of doctors have been laid off and hundreds of hospitals have been closed in recent years. It’s a right-winger’s dreamland: if you can get rich, God bless you. Otherwise, shut the fock up!!

3. They shoot journalists, don’t they?

The Committee to Protect Journalists announced in September that Russia was not only one of the most dangerous places on earth to ply the trade, but one of the worst at solving their murders. Witness Anna Politkoskayva, Russia’s equivalent of Dana Priest, the Washington Post reporter who broke the stories on the CIA’s secret “black sites.” After being unsuccessfully poisoned at least once, she was gunned down in the elevator of her apartment building in 2006. The killers have never been found; some low-level thugs were tried earlier this year, but acquitted. All those code words about the “mainstream media,” “media elite,” “liberal bias” and Fox News’ “Fair and Balanced” slogan boil down to a desire to slaughter anybody who tries to unearth the truth. You couldn’t find a better place to nurture such kindred spirits.

4. Nyet, we have no environment

Russia is in some parallel universe regarding environmental protections. Its factories belch unfiltered smoke, even the most rural portions of Siberia are covered with garbage, and everyone smokes. Oh, and no one – NO ONE – wears seatbelts, an amusing prospect where most of the roads are rutted mudtracks and little is spent to improve or even maintain them. A perfect home for all the naysayers who insist that global warming is a myth and that the government intrudes too much in their lives. And since the average life expectancy of a Russian is about 15 years less than it is for Americans, I will have to listen to them grumble about wanting to live free for significantly less time.

5. But Sarah May Still Visit!

Those departed compatriots of mine may still cast a wistful eye toward the Motherland as they adjust to their new life in Roosha, but have no fears. Sarah Palin always insisted she could see Roosha from her backyard. Assuming that is correct, you’ll have no problems stealing admiring glimpses of her. Of course, she won’t be able to hear you, but take comfort in the fact she never listened to you anyway. And since you’re doing this to make your country a better place to live, Honest Abe would no doubt be proud. If you ask me if it’s the right thing to do, I only have two words: You Betcha!